The Midlands to Get Further Help with Heritage Funding
Heritage in the Midlands is set to benefit from £2,958,225 in funding from the latest round of lifeline grants from the Government’s £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund.
Midlands to share in £14 million funding
The latest round of government funds will protect a further 162 heritage sites across England, sharing £14 million to ensure that jobs and access to arts and heritage in local communities are protected in the months ahead.
More than £9 million has been allocated by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Historic England on behalf of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
In the West Midlands, 16 heritage organisations will receive a total of £924,314 in funding, while in the East Midlands 20 heritage organisations will receive a total of £2,033,911.
These historic sites will receive the grants to meet on-going costs and support reopening and restarting activity when it is possible to do so safely.
Protecting heritage in the East Midlands
Several sites in the East Midlands will receive funds, including Taylor’s Bellfoundry in Loughborough – the only surviving bellfoundry still in operation in the UK – will receive £449,918 for urgent repairs which will help ensure that manufacturing can continue. As well as supporting thousands of heritage sites in the UK and around the world that rely on its services for their historic bells and bell towers, this grant will help safeguard specialist jobs and preserve skills and processes unique to the industry.
And Lincoln Castle will receive a grant of £1,086,629 to stabilise damage caused by a landslip on the western embankment, which has led to the iconic Grade I Listed building being added to the Heritage at Risk Register. The funding will help support jobs and preserve heritage sector skills as a host of specialist contractors will be needed for the work.
Lincoln Castle is a much loved visitor attraction welcoming over a quarter of a million visitors through its gates each year. This vital funding will contribute to essential work needed to ensure its future preservation. It will also support an ecosystem of specialist heritage contractors involved in the delivery of the works.
West Midlands' funding boost
In the West Midlands, Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings has been awarded £650,000 to kick-start a major programme of works on the Cross Mill, as part of a wider regeneration programme to transform the site, opening it back up for local people, visitors and local businesses. The project, which will mark the first stage of the building’s rescue and regeneration, will provide work for specialist construction contractors to preserve this Grade I listed site.
I’m absolutely delighted that this grant to carry out these essential works to the Grade I listed Cross Mill here at Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings has been awarded. This building – one of the first-generation of iron-framed buildings in the world – is one of four here that still needs vital funds to bring them back to life, and the new roof that we can now put on the Cross Mill, thanks to the Culture Recovery Fund, will help to safeguard it while we develop plans for its long term future.
Further funding for Covid-hit heritage across the region
Twenty-two heritage organisations across the Midlands are also receiving grants of up to £25,000 from the Covid-19 Emergency Heritage at Risk Response Fund, launched by Historic England and almost quadrupled thanks to the Culture Recovery Fund, which will cover maintenance and repairs urgently needed on historic buildings and sites.
Recipients include St Margaret’s Church, one of the oldest and largest churches in Leicester’s historic old town, which is to benefit from £25,000 for comprehensive repairs, allowing people to enter and use its much-valued surrounding green space again.
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