Historic monuments near quarries to get repair grants

RURAL communities that have been affected by aggregates extraction are to receive financial assistance to repair historic monuments cherished by local residents and considered important to village life.

Eight important historic monuments consisting of four churches, a park, an old mine, a guildhall and a 14th century castle, all situated on or close to working aggregates sites, have recently received repair grants estimated at £433,000 from the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund (ALSF), which is partly distributed by English Heritage on behalf of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

Barney Sloane, Head of English Heritage’s Historic Environment Commission, which distributes the fund, said: ‘The environmental impacts of quarrying and the transport of sand, gravel and stone can have significant effects on communities close by. What we are trying to do is to lessen this impact by helping to ensure that deteriorating but much-loved and nationally important historic buildings in such communities are repaired so that they can play a stronger role in sustaining and restoring a sense of pride and place now and for the future.’

The eight recent awardees are: St Mary’s Church, Dalton-in-Furness, Cumbria; St Michael’s Church, Arlecdon, Cumbria; Biddlestone Chapel, Netherton, Northumberland; Ayton Castle, Scarborough; Beaumont Park, Huddersfield; Christ Church, Sowerby Bridge; the Guildhall, Chichester; and the Prince of Wales Mine, Harrowbarrow, East Cornwall.

Alex Comber, ALSF programme manager at Defra, said: ‘We have an excellent working relationship with English Heritage, based on a clear recognition of the fundamental inter-relationship between natural and made-made environments, and the importance of heritage in rural areas. One of the objectives of ALSF is to compensate communities affected by the quarrying and transport of aggregates. These projects will do just that by preserving historic buildings valued by those communities.’

English Heritage will disburse £4 million of ALSF in 2007–2008. The majority of the fund will be spent on research to improve the understanding of archaeological sites that lie within areas favoured for extraction and how best to find them; publication of the results of archaeological discoveries unearthed during past extraction; and developing a higher awareness in communities and aggregates companies of the relationship between the historic environment and the aggregates industry. The fund will also help to repair nationally important monuments built as part of that industry or others that are directly threatened by the legacy of past extractions.