During our June Trustee meeting, we were delighted to award 15 grants coming to a total of £321,670 from our Preservation and Conservation programme and £25,000 from our Research, Advocacy and Development programme. Below we share a little about each grant and its purpose.
Preservation & Conservation
Designed by local architect, John Currie, the Earlsferry Town Hall is category B-listed with a distinct mini-Baronial, slim-spired clock tower. Our grant of £10,000 will fund the urgent repairs of the Hall’s windows – stopping further deterioration and enabling non-urgent works to go ahead.
Banana Enterprise Network Ltd is a charity working in deprived communities to prevent or provide relief from poverty. In 2020, they began a project to save the Grade II listed, Rock Hall. Our small grant of £5,000 will go towards investigative structural surveys to help them prepare for further applications.
The Cornerstone Church Liverpool moved into a Grade II listed building in 2020 that needed significant repairs, many of which the church has succeeded in doing. Our grant of £10,000 will help repair the stained-glass windows and save them from being lost.
Circus Eruption provides circus skills workshops and training for children and young people facing challenges. They are based in a Grade II former listed church. Our grant of £25,000 will go towards the repairs to the church’s stained-glass windows, spire, tower and valley.
Paxton House’s Principal Bedroom with Chippendale Furniture and replica 1770s dress on model. Credit: Paxton House Trust.
Dundee Museum of Transport shares the transport heritage of Dundee and Tayside. The museum aims to realise its long-held ambition to move from its present temporary location to the former Maryfield Tram Depot in the Stobswell area of the city. Our grant of £25,000 will go towards this first phase of this move and the preservation of this historic Tram Depot.
Heage Windmill is a Grade II* listed, six sailed, stone tower windmill situated in Derbyshire. The Heage Windmill Society discovered that one of two key structural timbers – the sheers – has significant wet rot. Our grant of £20,000 will go towards the replacement of the sheers and ensure the ongoing operation of the mill.
The Yorkshire Museum (part of the York Museums and Gallery Trust) wants to re-pack and conserve an elaborately decorated mosaic floor from a Roman villa at Oulston, North Yorkshire – one of the best preserved in their collection. Our grant of £10,000 will help with the conservation of the mosaic.
Hestercombe House and Gardens comprises of the Grade II* Hestercombe House and a Grade I listed, internationally award-winning landscape. Hestercombe is seeking to clean and re-gild the original 18th century, bronze, gilded plaster frame of ‘The Storm’, a painting by Coplestone Warre Bamfylde. Our small grant of £2,300 will support the conservation of the frame.
Heage Windmill. Credit: Heage Windmill Trust.
Paxton House has circa 140 items of Chippendale furniture and 30 masterpieces of Trotter furniture. The Paxton House Trust would like to conserve a rare, fragile, and unique collection of painted Chippendale cornices and furniture. Our grant of £10,000 will help fund the conservation of these unique objects.
Leas Lift is a Grade II* cliff funicular railway in Folkestone. It was built in 1885 and has transported 36 million passengers between the seafront and town above before closing in 2017. Our grant of £30,000 will help the Folkestone Leas Lift Company CIO match fund their National Lottery Heritage Fund capital grant and the lift’s overall restoration.
The Heart of Newhaven Community is creating an intergenerational community hub, ‘The Heart’ within a redundant, historic primary school in Newhaven, Scotland. Our grant of £10,000 will go towards repairs, in particular repair of the windows and roof to help reduce further rot.
The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford plans to conserve two rare, late 18th to early 19th century Persian paintings. One portrait is of Qajar ruler, Fath Ali Shah (1798-1834), and the other of a female Setar Player, Mirza Muhammed. Our grant of £10,000 will support the conservation of these two beautiful paintings.
Credit: Heart of Newhaven Community
Stixwould Village Hall is a Grade II listed hall, built in 1851, that works to support the inhabitants of this small village and surrounding areas. Our small grant of £4,370 will cover the costs of a heritage architect to complete drawings and designs needed for further grant applications.
The Architectural Heritage Fund (AHF) is a registered charity, working since 1976 to promote the conservation and sustainable re-use of historic buildings for the benefit of communities across the UK, particularly in economically disadvantaged areas. The AHF are one of our strategic partners and we are pleased to be renewing our partnership with them for another two years (2023-2025). In partnership with Historic England, we are supporting AHF’s project viability grants to support small organisations looking to find viable uses for vacant historic buildings in the top 30% most deprived areas in England.
Research, Advocacy and Development
Slow Ways is an initiative to create a national network of walking routes connecting all of Great Britain’s towns and cities, as well as thousands of villages. Slow Ways have created a new addition to this project, Tales from a Slow Way, which seeks to help dismantle a wide range of cultural barriers that prevent people from walking. They will both invite diverse groups to walk Slow Ways and create and amplify diverse and inclusive stories. Our grant of £25,000 will commission approx. 10 new ‘Tales from a Slow Way’.
If you’d like to learn more about these grants or any of our grants, you can read more on Recent Grants Awarded.
Feature image of Carlise Public Baths – an example of successful viability grants from the Architectural Heritage Fund. (Credit: AHF)