Lottery hurdle cleared for Roman fort attraction
A £2m project to recreate a Roman fort in a 120-acre former quarry in North Wales has moved a step closer after a successful bid to the Big Lottery Fund and Welsh Government.
The Park in the Past Community Interest Company, which owns the former Hanson quarry at Fagl Lane near the village of Hope in Flintshire, will use the £20,000 grant to carry out more extensive consultation with the community and invite local people to help shape plans for the site.
If successful in its next round of bidding, the Park in the Past project will create a “community heritage park”, featuring:
- Life-size Roman fort, to be called Fagl Fort
- Iron Age farm, recreating life as it was 2,000 years ago
- Visitor Centre with educational and research facilities
- Ecological spin-off projects to generate employment
- Conservation of wildlife habitat for rare species
- 35-acre lake at the quarry
- Nature trails and footpaths through woodland, wetland and lake-land
Paul Harston, director of Park in the Past, said: “We had to compete against 63 other projects for funding and understand that ours was only one of 16 applications that were successful. The grant will help to facilitate more extensive consultation with the community and enable the project team to firm up plans with local people.
“Our project will then go through to the second and final phase of adjudication in December where we will compete against 16 others with only eight receiving further funding.”
A decision on the eight successful projects is due to be announced in April 2017. The project is bidding under the Create Your Space programme of the Big Lottery Fund.
Lottery funding to create Roman fort whilst not too many miles in Chester, CWAC is selling site of real Roman amphitheatre to developers for hotel and offices. Hmmm…??
By OW
Chester, the North Wales authorities and Liverpool should all work much more closely together on tourism.. There’s no doubt Chester needs to look very carefully at Dee House to make sure that whatever they do with it is worthy of the site. It should be used as an interpretation centre for the amphitheatre if it is to be retained.. It is wonderfully sited and would link the city better with the Groves on the river Dee.
Good luck to Flintshire with their project by the way… Hope and Caergwrle are hidden gems.
By Alfie