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from Community Action magazine
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from Community Action magazine
Location: Bath and NE Somerset
Money for old .. buildings! - An extract from an article about the Batheaston Historic Buildings project published in Community Action, the quarterly magazine of Community Action - supporting rural communities in former Avon (issue 18, Autumn 2003)
Grants up to £25,000 are now on offer to community groups with the energy and commitment for a Local Heritage Initiative project.
Your group doesn't have to have any special skills - just enthusiasm and a willingness to invest time and effort to complement the funding, help and advice available from the Countryside Agency, which runs the LHI scheme.
It was after taking part in an architectural survey at Stanton Prior that Ron Russell and his wife Sheila went on to use the skills gained there as part of an LHI project in their home village of Batheaston, on the border of Gloucestershire and Wiltshire.
“We’ve always been interested in architecture,” Ron explains. “Bath itself is very famous and lots of books have been written about its buildings. But surprisingly little is known about the buildings in the surrounding villages like Batheaston, even though we’re only three miles from the city.
“Old buildings in the village are being modernised and updated all the time, and we thought their construction and history really should be recorded. After all, a community without history is like a person without a memory.”
A team of volunteers, guided by historical topographer, archaeologist and draughtsman Mike Chapman, has measured and researched 53 local buildings, judging their ages and changes by such things as the shapes of windows, doors and roofs, the thickness of walls, and the types of material used.
Copies of the resulting reports are already with the house owners and local Record Office, and will soon be accessible on the Internet.
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