Almost there for Heritage Centre’s £56,000 funding appeal

The public has taken to heart the proposal to build a heritage centre for the villages of Mountsorrel and Rothley. The Mountsorrel and Rothley Community Heritage Centre will be situated next to the recently restored Mountsorrel Railway, which itself functions as a heritage corridor between the Loughborough-based Great Central Railway and Stonehurst Family Farm and Motor Museum.

In February, Lafarge-Tarmac’s Landfill Communities Fund awarded a £540,000 grant to fund the project, but the terms of the grant required that a further £56,000 be raised as matched funding.

Donations have come in from not only local people, but from all over the country and abroad. After only four months £50,000 has been raised leaving only £6,000 still to be raised to release the grant.

However, time is running out as the terms of grant mean that the heritage centre has to be complete by July 16th 2015, which in turn means that the remaining match funding must, realistically, be raised by the end of July this year as work cannot start until the match funding is in place!

Project leader Steve Cramp commented “The response from the public has been superb. We are now within sight of the target we need to achieve in order to get work started. But it's essential that we succeed sooner rather than later. We have two old granite buildings to dismantle and reconstruct, stone by stone, as part of the heritage centre, within a year. This will be a tough ask but we are confident of success if we can start early enough.”

To help raise this figure a “sponsor a brick" appeal was launched where the public can sponsor the bricks that will be used to combine, into one unified building, the different structures that will form the core of the Heritage Centre. The names of sponsors will appear on a large commemorative plaque that will feature in the tearoom at the Centre.

With only just over £6,000 still to go, the project is launching a final push to bring in the relatively small remaining balance. If you want to learn about the benefits the new centre will bring then go to: www.heritage-centre.co.uk

And if you want to make a donation to the appeal, please send a cheque to the David Clarke Railway Trust, c/o 112 Balmoral Road, Mountsorrel, Leicestershire LE12 7EW (and write "Heritage Centre" on the back of the cheque).

Many thanks for your support.