The Heritage Lottery Fund has announced an overall budget of £250m for new grants during the financial year 2011-12 which is £45m more than the budget for the current year.
Money available from the Heritage Lottery Fund during 2011-12 includes:
£11m for the Townscape Heritage Initiative – which makes grants to help regenerate historic areas with particular social and economic needs
£23m for repair grants for places of worship – a scheme that provides funding for urgent, high-level repairs to listed places of worship
£21m for ‘Your Heritage’ – a small grants programme which helps voluntary and community groups to conserve and enjoy local heritage
£17m for Landscape Partnerships – a programme to conserve distinctive landscapes
North Staffordshire Community Rail Partnership has been awarded a grant totalling £3,000 for two community projects to help develop and promote the North Staffordshire Line between Crewe and Derby.
The funds have been awarded jointly by the Department for Transport, Network Rail and the Association of Community Rail Partnerships.
A total of £1,500 of the grant will be used to fund the development of a series of community artwork posters promoting the environmental benefits of rail travel and tourist attractions along the route, which will be displayed at Longton station. The posters will be created by art students from Sandon High School, at a number of special teaching sessions led by local artist and sculptor Anthony Hammond.
The second half of the grant will support the design, print and distribution of a community newsletter for the service which will be delivered to homes within one mile of local stations along the route.
Proposals for the regeneration of Stoke are going on display and the city council wants to know how a former historic pottery site can be brought back in to use.
On Wednesday, 1 December, and Saturday, 4 December, 2010, URBED which is producing a masterplan for the regeneration of Stoke will be asking residents what they would like to see in the town.
A double-decker Routemaster bus will tour the town on both days showcasing options for the masterplan. Plans include details on possible new residential areas, retail spaces and ways of incorporating improved extra public space in to the town centre.
As part of the consultation Stoke-on-Trent City Council is asking residents and developers to suggest how the 10 acre Spode site can be used to kick start regeneration.
Designed by London architect Frank Matcham, the Grand Theatre of Varieties in Trinity Street, Hanley opened on August 22nd, 1898.
A popular music hall, the Grand produced variety concerts staring world famous artistes including George Robey, Vesta Tilley, Albert Chevalier and Gertie Gitana.
Born at Longport in 1888, Gertrude Astbury, who took the stage name Gertie Gitana, was the daughter of pottery worker William Astbury and his wife Lavinia, a teacher at St. Peter’s Roman Catholic School, Cobridge. A child prodigy, Gertie began her theatrical career singing in Tomlinson’s Royal Gipsy Choir when she was four years old. She made her music hall debut as Little Gitana at the Tivoli in Barrow in Furness.
Always receiving tremendous applause when she appeared in the Potteries, Gertie captivated audiences at the Grand with her repertoire of popular songs which included Nellie Dean, When the Harvest Moon is Shining and Sweet Caroline.
Despite Gertie’s popularity, the Grand could not compete with silent films made in Hollywood. At the beginning of the 1930s, it was converted into a cinema. The first film shown there was Sally in our Alley starring Gracie Fields. Three months after it became a cinema, the Grand caught fire.
At about 5.30am on May 11th, 1932 two men going to work and a policeman saw smoke coming from the building. The police officer roused the manager who lived on the premises. They entered the auditorium and found it had been blazing for several hours. Fire engines came from Hanley, Burslem and Longton. Using nine hoses, the firemen poured 3,000 gallons of water per minute into the building. Suddenly, the roof collapsed and flames leapt into the sky. The Grand was doomed. There was nothing the firemen could do. Fire consumed the building which was completely destroyed.
“Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against time;
“Once I built a railroad; now it’s done. Buddy, can you spare a dime?
“Once I built a tower, up to the sun, brick, and rivet, and lime;
“Once I built a tower, now it’s done. Buddy, can you spare a dime?”
Written by Yip Harburg and Jay Gorney during the early 1930s, “Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime” captures the despair of unemployed men during the “Great Depression” which engulfed the world in 1929.
Today the world faces a similar economic crisis and here in Stoke-on-Trent the city council has drawn up plans to destroy our heritage which, if implemented, will jeopardise the region’s economic recovery when the recession ends.
The Phoenix Trust supports the campaigns that have been launched by local people to save Etruria Industrial Museum, Ford Green Hall, Tunstall Pool and other heritage assets the local authority wants to get rid of.
Chatterley Whitfield Mining Museum, which merited World Heritage Site status in its own right, should have become the National Mining Museum. However, the city council failed to recognise the museum’s national and international significance and allowed it to close when minor financial problems arose.
Today, the same lack of vision that destroyed Chatterley Whitfield threatens heritage buildings throughout the city. In Burslem, both Ceramica and the Wedgwood Institute face an uncertain future. Many years ago, Gordon Forsyth who was the principal of Stoke-on-Trent’s Central School of Art said the city reminded him “of a bride going to her wedding in rags”. He was wrong. At the time these comments were made in the 1940s, Stoke-on-Trent was the centre of the world’s pottery industry.
Over the years, things have changed dramatically. North Staffordshire has lost its coal mining and steel making industries. Despite claims made by spin doctors that we are the Ceramic Capital of the World, the pottery industry is declining. Soon all major production lines will be transferred to factories in China and South East Asia leaving us with derelict factories protected by security fences topped by razor wire.
If the city council succeeds in destroying our heritage and preventing the growth of an heritage based tourist industry, Stoke-on-Trent will become a bride dressed in rags – a bride forced by poverty to sit on the church steps carrying a begging bowl and singing, “Buddy, can you spare a dime, a dollar, a quid or a euro?”
Due to spammers, we have had to disable auto registration to the site. If you wish to register please Email the site admin at website{@}northstaffordshire.co.uk (without the {brackets}) and we will be pleased to add you to our mailing list. We promise we don't share your details with any third party and we never Email attachments.
Why not register for our forum whilst you're here. Take the link and register to have your say today.
Button
