Heritage Lottery Fund earmarks £17m to help communities look after their landscapes
The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has announced 10 earmarked first-round passes totalling £17m made through its Landscape Partnership (LP) programme. This programme helps conserve areas of distinctive landscape character and supports schemes that provide long-term social, economic and environmental benefits for rural areas. The landscapes receiving HLF support are:
- The White Cliffs of Dover – Dame Vera Lynn’s favourite Kentish coastline, made-up of distinctive white cliffs and chalk downlands;
- The mid Tees Valley – a ‘lost’ landscape between the Yorkshire Dales and North Pennines;
- Druridge Bay – a former mining area on Northumberland’s coast, characterised by mature woodland and Anglo-Saxon field systems;
- The Belfast Hills – an arc of hills dramatically framing the city of Belfast;
- Mourne Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty – picturesque mountains and heathland habitats in County Down which provided the inspiration for CS Lewis’ kingdom of Narnia;
- The Staffordshire Moorlands – a substantial part of the Churnet Valley bordering the Peak District National Park;
- Meres and Mosses – a flat glacial landscape in the ‘dairying’ country of north Shropshire and south Cheshire;
- Clyde and Avon Valleys – two valleys in Scotland’s industrial belt of Lanarkshire, defined by ancient woodlands and orchards;
- Avalon Marshes – low-lying, habitat-rich wetlands to the west of Glastonbury in Somerset;
- The Solway Plain – remote Cumbrian wetlands originally shaped by the agricultural practises of medieval Cistercian monks.
HLF News: LINK
