A grisly family attraction has denied a temporary closure is solely down to a rat infestation.
Chester 's ‘Sick to Death’ museum opened last year in the linked 14th century Water Tower and Bonewaldesthorne’s Tower on the corner of the City Walls near Telford’s Warehouse.
But the website currently states: “Sick to Death is currently closed due to urgent maintenance issues.”
Sick to Death tells the story of Chester through the health of its inhabitants over hundreds of years. It is also home to the creepy Plague Doctor, who was hired by cities struck by the plague, an epidemic spread by parasitic fleas attached to rats during medieval times.
Dean Paton, managing director of not-for-profit company Big Heritage, said rats were only part of the reason behind the temporary closure.
He said: “We are having a big refurbishment; new stuff is going in and some old stuff is coming out. The council did pull out some trees in the Water Tower gardens and I think it disturbed a nest of rodents. We had one or two in the tower but that’s not the only reason for the closure.
“We are having a clear-out replacing boards and technology.”
Dean, whose company recently helped organise a Pokemon GO world exclusive event in Chester, hopes Sick to Death will reopen in the middle of October.
Big Heritage is currently busy renovating a secret World War Two bunker in the heart of Liverpool city centre which will open to the public later this month for the first time in decades.
The bomb proof room – located at Rumford Street’s Western Approaches World War Two museum – was used as the cipher room which sent out coded messages during the Battle of the Atlantic.
