It’s the 30th anniversary of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and, to mark the occasion, £30 million has been allocated to 15 new projects across the UK. The capital’s 200-acre Crystal Palace Park will receive the largest sum of £4.7 million for restoration and the creation of a new visitor centre and playground; it's great news for a 170-year-old former pleasure ground, a landscape designed by Joseph Paxton, designer of the Crystal Palace glass building, and brightened up by the model dinosaurs created by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins.
On the lower Thames, 1920s Tilbury Riverside station, the port that welcomed the Windrush generation in 1948, will receive £4.48 million to transform it into artist-studio lets, a café and event space, with direct access to the river.
Up in North Yorkshire, £2.57 million will give Ripon Museums a boost and, in Wales, £1.06 million should enable Community Benefit Society Menter y Plu to buy and reopen Tafarn y Plu, the 200-year-old pub in the Gwynedd village of Llanystumdwy.
Species such as Atlantic salmon, brown trout and the critically endangered freshwater pearl mussel should benefit from £1.8 million awarded to Scotland’s Riverwoods Blueprint Project. Some £4.45 million will go to help improve Tullie House Museum in Carlisle over the next 10–15 years and Margam Castle, Port Talbot, on the east of Swansea Bay, will receive £900,030 for restoration.
The charity claims that, combined, these grants and the resulting projects will create 87 jobs and apprenticeships and more than 620 volunteer roles. Visitor numbers should increase, too, with a forecasted audience of some 1.28 million in the coming years, making use of 17,000 public engagement and 18,000 heritage engagement and educational opportunities, with more than 1.06 million square metres (262 acres) of land redeveloped and 100,000 trees planted.
‘These wonderful projects demonstrate the astonishing breadth of heritage that people value and want to pass onto future generations, from a Victorian workhouse to the famous Crystal Palace Park dinosaurs and from one of the UK’s historic ports to our precious riverside habitats,’ explains Eilish McGuinness, National Lottery Heritage Fund chief executive.
‘Thanks to money raised by National Lottery players over the past 30 years, we have worked with those who care for heritage and helped transformed the UK’s heritage landscape, contributing to communities and the economy. Our funding benefits all parts of the heritage ecosystem… and I cannot wait to see what the future brings.’
Some £8.6 billion has been invested in more than 47,000 projects across the UK since the Heritage Fund was founded in 1994, with a further £3.6 billion in estimated grants over the next 10 years.
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