Sunderland Fans' Museum faces damage bill of tens of thousands of pounds as thieves try to steal lead from roof

Founder Micheal Ganley discovered the crooks had struck when he arrived to open up at the museum – which is based in the former Monkwearmouth station between St Peter’s and the Stadium of Light Metro stops – ahead of Saturday’s Sunderland AFC home clash with Norwich City.

"There was a 6ft piece of lead hanging down trackside,” said Michael. “If it had fallen down onto the track, it could have caused serious problems.”

Michael believes the thieves must have struck in the early hours of Saturday morning: “We locked up at about 6pm on Friday but there would have been trains running about every 20 minutes in each direction until around 12 o’clock,” he said.

"They have gone to five different locations so it has been a multi-man job – definitely a minimum of three people.”

The team had particularly targeted the flat section of the museum’s roof, which was last refurbished about four years ago.

"The council had about £25,000 to do up that area of the building, including the roof and the windows,” said Michael./

"There is probably about 30 or 40 square yards of lead up there.”

With the museum heavily reliant on its matchday income from home and away fans, Michael had little time to take in the full extent of what had happened.

"I had to keep focused because it was a match day, it was an early kick-off, so I was running around because we had a lot of fans coming in and fans want to come here for positive memories,” he said.

"But a couple of people had seen me running around and a couple of them asked me what was going on, so I had to share the news with the team and that really deflated everyone.”

Although the museum is insured, Michael is still facing hours of work and inconvenience to sort the repairs out: “We do have good insurance but we are still going to have to get quotes, to get people out,” he said.

Because the damage is on the track side of the building, the work will have to meet stringent health and safety requirements.

“We will need scaffolding, and where we need scaffolding, we will have to get permits, which is going to be a huge cost,” said Michael.

Michael said the work would also have to be carried out overnight, for a few hours at a time, in order to minimise disruption to Metro and local rail services.

"People can only work between 12.20 at night and 4.40 in the morning – so it is dark hours. We are probably going to have to pay treble time because most people just will not want to do it."

The museum will also have to pay Network Rail to close the line down properly so work can be carried out safely.

"It is £5,000 a time plus VAT, so that is £6,000 a night to close the line and I think it is going to take eight or nine nights,” said Michael.

"So we are looking at around £60,000 and that’s before you pay for the scaffolding, the painting, the lead work and materials.”