During our March Trustee meeting, we were delighted to award 17 grants coming to a total of £214,500 from our Preservation and Conservation programme and £40,000 from our Research, Advocacy and Development programme. Below we share a little about each grant and its purpose.
Preservation & Conservation
St Michaels is a medieval, A-listed church in Linlithgow, Scotland that has an eye-catching Crown of Thorns spire, designed by Geoffrey Clarke RA. A beloved landmark in the town, our grant of £10,000 will go towards repairing the spire.
Great Yarmouth Preservation Trust preserves and promotes the heritage in the borough of Great Yarmouth by saving at risk, historic buildings and finds sustainable uses for them. After growing rapidly, our grant of £30,000 (allocated at £10,000 per year for 3 years) will go towards the new Executive Manager’s salary.
The North East Scotland Preservation Trust (NESPT) restores heritage buildings in Aberdeenshire and creates viable and sustainable uses for them. Situated in the Old Cluny Kirkyard, NESPT want to restore the Elyza Fraser Mausoleum. Our grant of £15,000 will support the repair costs of the mausoleum.
Based in a Victorian, Grade-II listed Weelsby Hall, Linkage Community Trust is a charity supporting people with learning difficulties and disabilities. The Hall is in poor condition and only partly occupied. Our grant of £25,000 will support urgent roof repairs, whilst the Trust applies for larger capital grant programmes.
St Michael’s Church, Crown of Spires, Linlithgow. Credit: St Michael’s Church.
By giving Wiltshire Museum a new home in Devizes Assize Court, the Devizes Assize Court Trust (DACT) aims to restore and bring new use to this grand courthouse building. Our grant of £20,000 will help DACT in their development phase, prior to applying for larger capital grant programmes.
Haining House is a beautiful, A-listed Palladain mansion house based in Haining estate, overlooking a loch and 160 acres of grounds near Selkirk. Our grant on £25,000 will go towards a shortfall of funding to help Haining Charitable Trust to repair the external fabric of the House.
Camphill Rudolf Steiner Schools in Aberdeen supports children and young people with learning disabilities and multiple diagnoses. They are giving new use to the historic Murtle Lodge, by retrofitting it to create a new sustainable social enterprise & heritage centre. Our grant of £15,000 will go towards the restoration of the building.
Figureheads are the carved wooden sculptures that decorate the bows of sailing ships and could be described as the soul of a ship, offering good luck and protection from the perilous journeys it made. Our grant of £15,000 will help the National Museum of the Royal Navy to conserve, restore and re-display a selection of important figureheads.
Moths have been endangering the beautiful textile collections in Emery Walker’s house – a famous Arts and Crafts house. Sir Emery Walker was a printer, typographer and close friend of William Morris. Our grant of £10,000 will go to the Emery Walker Trust and its urgent moth treatment.
Weelsby Hall. Credit: Linkage Community Trust.
Whilst primarily paper based, the British Library’s collections include an extensive array of textiles, from flags to embroidered books. It was the first library in the UK to employ a textile conservator and our grant of £15,000 will support a one-year textile conservation internship.
SS Freshspring is a historic steamship that is currently berthed at Bideford in the South West. The Steamship Freshspring Trust would like to explore if the ship can be fully restored to carry passengers. Our grant of £15,000 will go towards a feasibility study to see if the ship can return to full steam operation.
A small grant of £5,000 will help Trinity Community Arts centre to install a fall arrest ‘Keeline’ system on the roof of its home, a Grade II* listed church. The fall arrest system allows safe access to the roof and high-level stonework.
When Low Ham Roman Villa was excavated in the 1950s, they found a Virgil mosaic depicting the adventures of Dido and Aeneas in Carthage as told in the Aeneid. We helped with the costs of putting the mosaic on display in Somerset County Museum and now our new grant of £4,000 will enable Cardiff University to publish the research on the site.
SS Freshspring. Credit: Steamship Freshspring Trust.
The Mary Rose Museum showcases the sixteenth century warship, The Mary Rose, and a large collection of Tudor objects. Our small grant of £2,000 will goes towards the Museum’s new air exchange rate testing system that will carefully control humidity in the exhibits.
The Clan Gregor Society helps to advance the arts, heritage and culture of Clan Gregor and Scotland – including archaeological activities. Our small grant of £4,000 will help conserve the gravestones of the MacGregor chiefs and put them of display.
Crossness Engines Trust conserves, restores and maintains the Grade-I & -II listed buildings, engines, site and collections at Crossness – the Southern Outfall of the London sewer system. Our small grant of £4,500 will go towards investigating the brickwork in the Beam Engine House.
Research, Advocacy and Development Fund
The Heritage Trust Network is a UK-wide membership body for charities, community organisations and social enterprises rescuing, restoring and managing historic sites. The network has identified a gap in the provision of support to grass-roots heritage organisations and partners. They aim to address this through its Essential Networks project, a major development and resilience project. Our grant of £40,000 (allocated over two years) will support the development of the Essential Networks project.
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 Elyza Fraser Mausoleum (Credit: North East Scotland Preservation Trust).