REFURBISHMENT work at the Elgar Birthplace Museum could open the door for more rare manuscripts to go on display at the Lower Broadheath venue.

The original full score of the first of Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance Marches is currently on display at the museum, where it will remain until the end of October.

It is the centrepiece of an exhibition celebrating the centenary of the Pomp and Circumstance Marches No 1 and 2, having been loaned by the British Library.

Its presence is a direct result of the refurbishment at Lower Broadheath, which has allowed the museum to install facilities of a high enough standard of security and environmental conditions to satisfy the British Museum.

Michael Messenger, chairman of its management committee, said hopefully it would not be last such exhibit.

"It's gratifying to see the trust placed in us by the country's national library, with whom we've established a very fruitful working relationship, he said.

Also on display is the museum's vocal score of Land of Hope and Glory, words later added to the stirring march, and belted out by the audience, normally, at the Last Night of the Proms.

"I've got a tune that will knock 'em - knock 'em flat!" was Elgar's comment to his friend Dora Penny when she visited his Malvern home in May 1901.

The tune was to become the Pomp and Circumstance Military March No 1 in D, which had its premiere in Liverpool on October 19 that year and had its London premiere three days later.

He planned a series of six but wrote four between 1901 and 1907, adding a fifth in 1930.

March No 1 was dedicated to his friend Alfred Rodewald, a Liverpool textile merchant, whose death two years after the premiere so distressed the composer.

Elgar credited King Edward VII with the idea of setting words to his orchestral march, which was to become Land of Hope and Glory.

He had been commissioned to compose the Coronation Ode, to include the Pomp and Circumstance tune set to words by A C Benson, but the King's appendicitis forced postponement.

The first full performance of the Coronation Ode finally took place in Sheffield in October 1902, with Elgar conducting. What is so well known today is a slightly different song version.