National Lottery Heritage Fund grant for South Pennine Archives

Pennine Heritage Ltd awarded grant by The National Lottery Heritage Fund to protect and develop South Pennine Archives

Today, Pennine Heritage Ltd, in partnership with the Hebden Bridge Local History Society, is announcing a £54,827 grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund to protect and develop South Pennine Archives and transform access.

Pennine Heritage, established in 1979 to preserve the heritage of the Upper Calder Valley, is based at the Birchcliffe Centre in Hebden Bridge, a Grade II listed former Baptist chapel. We are home to South Pennine Archives, which includes the Pennine Horizons digital image collections and the physical collections of the Hebden Bridge Local History Society. Without this funding from the Heritage Fund, the stories held in our collections would remain unheard.

The National Lottery funded project will enable the creation of a new website for South Pennine Archives to host not only the images on the current Pennine Horizons website, but also a range of documents from our physical archive which will be digitised under the project. In addition, the project will fund vital preservation work to the front of the Birchcliffe Centre, thereby creating a museum space to display artefacts from our wonderful collections that illustrate the history of the upper Calder Valley.

Volunteers will play a part in helping to preserve and celebrate our archival collections through the digitisation process, making our archival collections more accessible than ever before. The process will also provide an environmentally sustainable way of engaging with our resources, while also celebrating Pennine Heritage’s history in promoting environmental causes.

In the long term, the restoration of the front of the building, as well as the development of South Pennine Archives, will make our history more accessible, preserve the building and celebrate the stories and collections that we have gathered over the past 40 years. It also allows us to safeguard the charity into the future, providing future volunteers with the tools to carry on the work of those that have gone before them.

Dr Andrew McTominey, Heritage Manager from Pennine Heritage said:

We are delighted to have received this support from The National Lottery Heritage Fund. Thanks to money raised by National Lottery players which allows us to continue the good work that Pennine Heritage has been doing in the past few years and go much further.

Helen Featherstone, Director, England, North at The National Lottery Heritage Fund said:

Thanks to money raised by National Lottery players, we are delighted to be supporting the restoration of the Birchcliffe Centre and digitising the archive. This will ensure that the South Pennine Archives are preserved for years to come, and this important heritage will be enjoyed by both local people and those further afield.

As the largest dedicated funder of the UK’s heritage, The National Lottery Heritage Fund’s vision is for heritage to be valued, cared for and sustained for everyone, now and in the future as set out in our strategic plan, Heritage 2033.

Over the next ten years, they aim to invest £3.6billion raised for good causes by National Lottery players to bring about benefits for people, places and the natural environment.

They help protect, transform and share the things from the past that people care about, from popular museums and historic places, our natural environment and fragile species, to the languages and cultural traditions that celebrate who they are.

They are passionate about heritage and committed to driving innovation and collaboration to make a positive difference to people’s lives today, while leaving a lasting legacy for future generations to enjoy.

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