Cumbriais all set to receive a brand new 21st Century Public Records Office thanks to a huge lottery windfall.
The award of £4.79 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) is the largest grant the fund has ever awarded to Cumbria. The money will pave the way for the redevelopment of Lady Gillford House at Petteril Bank in Carlisle into a modern, high-tech archive, exhibition and research centre to service the needs of people in North Cumbria.
Plans include restoring the currently unused Lady Gillford House, the former home to Cumbria Workshops for the Blind, and transforming it into a high-tech archive centre. The current Carlisle Record Office is at Carlisle Castle, its home for the past 44 years, but the accommodation there - both for the records themselves and for the public - is no longer adequate and a new home is needed. It is hoped that work can start on the new site in 2007 and the new centre opened to the public in 2009.
Councillor Roger Bingham, County Council Portfolio Holder for Culture, said: “The award of this grant by HLF is tremendous news. Despite very strong competition nationally, our Archive Service has been able to submit a proposal that HLF feels able to support and develop further. It's an excellent scheme that will bring life back to a disused and semi-derelict historic site and will bring investment and development back to one of the more deprived areas of the county. Best of all, it will provide North Cumbria with a 21st Century Public Record Office that we can all be proud of.
"This is the largest Heritage Lottery Fund grant ever awarded in Cumbria and we're all giving the Archive Service staff our support and best wishes in their endeavours over the next few months to secure this major investment for the county,” said Councillor Bingham.
Thanks to the HLF commitment, Cumbria County Council, who will manage the grant, now have the security they need to embark on the final costly detailed planning stage. HLF are releasing £109,500 of the grant to help fund this vital process. HLF will then need to approve the details of the plans before releasing the rest of the money.
Jim Grisenthwaite, Head of Culture at Cumbria County Council, said: “A huge amount of hard work by a dedicated team has gone into this project. We are close to realizing our aim of creating a new facility that everybody in the community will value and want to use. It will provide a focal point for family and local history research and it will also provide us for the first time with the facilities to be able to celebrate and exhibit the rich archival history of Cumbria to a wider public.
"The award of the development grant gives us all a great confidence boost, but we won’t be taking anything for granted as we now redouble our efforts to secure the main prize and turn our aim into reality,” he said.
Explaining the importance of the award, Heritage Lottery Fund’s Regional Manager Tony Jones said: “This exciting project will help open up Cumbria’s archive treasures to a much wider audience - including the extremely important Lonsdale archive, the mediaeval charters from the City of Carlisle and the records of the pioneering suffragist, Catherine Marshall. It will show how relevant those records are to our understanding of modern day life and will also help us all realise the increasing desire to know more about our ancestors.
"The project will offer a new lease of life to a currently disused historic building. This is a wonderful example of how the past can be opened up to the present, with the help of Heritage Lottery Fund money, to create an innovative project which can be enjoyed by everyone,” he said.