At our September Trustee meeting, we were delighted to award 14 grants coming to a total of £255,000 from our Preservation and Conservation programme. Below we share a little about each grant and its purpose.
Chatham Historic Dockyard is a large independent museum and maritime heritage attraction situated in Chatham, Kent. It was a national facility for shipbuilding and repair for the Royal Dockyard for 400 years until it was decommissioned in 1984.
Our grant of £25,000 is towards the conservation of the 1701 ceiling painting, attributed to Sir Thomas Highmore, ‘Mars surrounded by an assembly of Gods’. In 1723 it was installed above the central staircase of the Grade I Commissioner’s House, the most intact naval residence in Britain. The painting has been damaged through water ingress and has layers of surface dirt, cracking and discoloured varnish. The conservation work, which will need to take place in situ, will stabilise, clean and repair the ceiling painting in time for the public to enjoy when the building reopens in the summer next year.
Made famous by the BBC’s Ghost series, West Horsley Place, is Grade I listed and dates from the 15th century and currently on the At Risk register. The west range gabled roof of the manor house has developed a serious structural issue making it unstable. If the roof tiles fail, the 15C wattle and daub structure in the attic would be threatened. Our grant of £10,000 is for urgent repairs which will also ensure public access.
The Food Museum, based in East Anglia, is Britain’s only museum dedicated to food. Their mission is to connect people with where their food comes from and the impact of our choices on the environment, society, health and wellbeing.
Our grant of £25,000 is towards repair and conservation of a Grade II* Medieval Barn, Stowmarket’s oldest secular building, which lies at the entrance to the Museum. The Barn will be transformed into a year-round usable community space; and will enhance the museum visitors’ experience.
(c) Food Museum.
Bailiffgate Museum & Gallery is dedicated to preserving the heritage and culture of Alnwick and Northumberland. The Museum is housed in a former church, but the ambition, is to restore Grade I Georgian Northumberland Hall creating a new home for the museum.
The Georgian ornate plasterwork in the assembly room of the Hall features three ceiling roses with a Greek key pattern to the outer ring followed by acanthus leaves and an eight-pointed star in the centre as well as decorative cornice features. Restoration work is needed due to water ingress, over painting, cracks and paint loss. Our grant of £30,000 is for the conservation work of this special feature.
The Birmingham Conservation Trust works to preserve Birmingham’s threatened architectural heritage. They are planning to conserve and bring back into use the Golden Lion Inn as a community facility.
The 16th Century, grade II timber-framed Golden Lion Inn is an extremely rare survival of a late-medieval building and a pioneering example of architectural conservation practice. Originally built as a town house in Deritend in Birmingham city centre it was saved from demolition in 1911 by the Birmingham Archaeological Society and relocated to its current home in Canon Hill Park.
The building is at risk of destruction due to structural failure, water ingress and arson. Our grant of £20,000 will help towards repairs to make the building structurally sound, so that it can be utilised as an important community asset for local people.
Dunollie Castle is a scheduled monument, dating from the 13th century, it is located on a cliff north of the town of Oban, on the west coast of Scotland.
Barmkin Wall, the medieval wall which surrounds the castle and the cliff face on which the castle sits is in need of urgent repair.
Our grant of £12,000 will go towards expert reports including from geologists and heritage architects to identify remedial options to stabilise the site.
The Liliesleaf Trust is a Black-led organisation, aiming to ‘advance public knowledge of Britain’s central role in the international movement to end apartheid in Southern Africa from the 1960s to 1994’. The Trust is developing Europe’s first Anti-Apartheid Museum in the building of the former headquarters of the African National Congress (ANC) and the centre for British anti-apartheid activities at 28 Penton Street, Islington.
The Trust is requesting funding towards the conservation, storage and display of some objects, photographs and ephemera including, three museum grade cases, a bespoke ‘memory box’ and an archivist’s specialist time. The objects for conservation and display are an adapted suitcase used by the activist group, the London recruits, correspondence between key activists (including Nelson Mandela), and photographs of leading activists.
Our grant of £23,000 will help make anti-apartheid materials accessible to the public for the first time. The objects will be displayed safely and within environmental standards.
(c) Anti-Apartheid Movement Archives.
The West Midlands Historic Buildings Trust finds sustainable futures for listed buildings at risk. It plans to convert two Grade II* buildings, St Michael’s chapel and the timber-framed Master’s House (on Historic England’s At Risk Register), into affordable housing. It will also preserve the remains of an 11th century Leper Hospital, a Scheduled Ancient Monument, below ground on the site.
Our grant of £15,000 will go towards this work which will help find sustainable uses for this important heritage site.
Presteigne and Norton Community Trust has helped transform, St Andrews in Norton, Powys, Wales, a redundant church into a busy community asset offering a wide variety of events and activities for all sections of the community to enjoy. Now known as Norton Community Hub, the Grade II* former church is a near complete example of the rural work of St George Gilbert Scott’s office.
Our grant of £10,000 is for specialist complex restoration of the turret clock. The flatbed striking clock dates from 1887; it has not worked for a couple of decades, the clock faces and dials are damaged. Once restored, the village will have a working clock at its heart again.
(c) Deborah Edwards.
Grosmont Town Hall is a Grade II well preserved early c19 town hall. The council and a group of local volunteers (Grosmont Futures CIO) want to tackle the problem of social isolation by upgrading facilities and transforming the town hall into an accessible community hub.
Our grant for £10,000 will go towards repairs to the windows, doors and floor boarding.
Based in Brighton and Hove, Making it Out is a charity set up to support vulnerable people including ex-offenders and those at risk of committing crime, dealing with a range of challenges from homelessness to addiction and mental health issues.
Having successfully transformed a dilapidated barn to expand their premises a few years ago they now have been offered the chance to develop another barn at the Grade II Buncton Manor Farm, Wiston in West Sussex. Most of the repairs will be carried out by staff and service users building in skill development, qualifications and experience of heritage construction.
Our grant for £15,000 is for early preparatory work. The long-term outcome is a ‘centre for wellbeing through making’ bringing great social benefits and transforming one of the few historic structures remaining in the village of Buncton.
Tylorstown Welfare Hall, Rhondda Fach Valley, is a Grade II listed building, built in 1933 with contributions from local coal miners, and actively used by the community as a library, dance hall, snooker hall and meeting space. It is the last remaining Miners Hall in the Rhondda Fach area, and the only community space in Tylorstown.
Our grant of £20,000 will go towards the first phase of repairs to the external fabric of the building to help make it water tight. Once the much larger renovation work takes place, the long-term use and preservation of this historic community asset will be secured.
Ushaw Historic House, Chapels & Gardens is an accredited museum and venue for cultural events with a series of interlocking buildings and extensive grounds in County Durham.
Established in 1808 as St Cuthbert’s College Ushaw, it is a former Catholic Seminary (closed 2011) with 13 chapels, designed by Augustus Pugin. The main college chapel, St Michael’s is Grade I listed, with various other parts of the complex being Grade I, Grade II* and Grade II.
Ushaw is seeking funding for a condition survey of their Grade II listed library wing to understand the conservation needs of this part of the building. The library has an exceptionally important collection of over 50,000 items, including early manuscripts and rare editions including a first edition of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and the Nuremburg Chronicle of 1493.
Our grant of £20,000 is for a condition survey of the library wing to understand the conservation needs of this part of the building.
A hoard of Bronze Age artefacts unearthed by a metal detectorist near Peebles in the Scottish Borders had lain undisturbed for 3,000 years before it was discovered in 2020. Dating from between 1,000BC and 800BC, the hoard has been described as one of the most significant ever found in the country, and important for research and understanding Bronze Age life in Scotland.
The collection, which contains over 500 objects and fragments, was acquired by the National Museums Scotland in 2024, Many of the fragments will not survive without conservation. Our grant of £20,000 will help to stabilise and preserve the hoard and enable it to be on public display in the future.
(c) National Museums Scotland.