National Lottery Heritage Fund grant to help regenerate 30 St Werburgh Street

Chester Cathedral has been awarded funds by The National Lottery Heritage Fund to undertake Project Revive – the first stage in the revitalisation of 30 St Werburgh Street.

Today, Chester Cathedral is announcing a £250,000 grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund to help repair and restore 30 St Werburgh Street, a historic city centre building. The project, made possible thanks to money raised by National Lottery players, will deliver better community engagement, improve sustainability, and greater public access to the Cathedral’s heritage.

30 St Werburgh Street is a landmark historic building in Chester, formerly Kings School, the Cathedral Choir School and more recently a bank. Without this funding, its historic features, such as the Tudoresque Hall and Gothic archway could suffer deterioration, risking the loss of an important part of the city’s architectural and social history.

This grant will enable the Cathedral to undertake a programme of repair and conservation works focussing on structural integrity, windows and glazing, and stonework. The grant also funds a brand-new Community Engagement and Heritage Development Officer role to deliver public heritage engagement, exhibition and an oral history programme based around the buildings previous uses. 

Furthermore, the grant will allow the Cathedral to undertake sustainability planning;- testing connectivity with the Cathedral, piloting pop-up enterprise activities, enhancing business and stakeholder partnerships (consultation/workshops), reviewing volunteer offer, and producing a legacy plan.

The Dean of Chester, the Very Revd Dr Tim Stratford says 
"Thanks to National Lottery players we can repair and reoccupy the former bank building attached to the Cathedral’s West End, further develop our community work, give our volunteers better facilities, and start to explore how we fully realise our use of this magnificent piece of heritage.

“We’re exceptionally grateful to The National Lottery Heritage Fund as it allows us to move forward with the vision for Chester Cathedral to be more visible and accessible in its historic city centre setting and to re-animate a significant part of the Cathedral that until recently was not within our care.” the Dean concludes.

Project Revive will benefit from the grant across all four of The National Lottery Heritage Fund’s four investment principles.  For example:

• Project Revive will restore the building’s internal and external fabric, improving the condition of the heritage whilst conserving its original features which are of significant value
   
• The Cathedral’s re-use and renovation of the building will ensure that we are mitigating carbon emissions creating very little embodied carbon. We will ensure remedial works and methods of undertaking the works are as energy efficient as possible, and will minimise the negative environment impact of the project by restoring the building rather than new build
   
• The Cathedral will see to diversify its audience by proactively engaging with specific charities and community groups underserved by heritage. Similarly, we will target audiences who may benefit from improved wellbeing and participation, for example, those who are bereaved, neurodiverse, those experiencing isolation, dementia or struggling to get back into the workplace
   
• Project Revive will increase volunteer wellbeing, satisfaction and ultimately retention by providing modern and improved facilities within a Volunteer Hub. This will improve organisational and financial sustainability for Chester Cathedral as volunteers are an incredible resource allowing savings to be made on salaries and other core costs. Volunteers are often highly qualified and bring with them professional skills and expertise