Trent Vale bids for Heritage Lottery funding

The Trent Vale area could soon host its own festival, see areas of rare wetland habitats extended and improved, have a network of heritage trails and even lay claim to its own rare cattle breed if a £1.7m Heritage Lottery Fund grant is approved as part of a £2.7m scheme.
Family with children walking along the River Trent

These proposals are just a few of the potential projects that the Trent Vale Landscape Partnership (TVLP) is proposing in order to rebuild community links and celebrate the natural and cultural heritage along the River Trent between Newark and West Stockwith.

If successful the funding will also be used to deliver:

• Small grants scheme for community and farm projects
• Opportunities for 100’s of people to get involved in arts, heritage and environment based projects and training courses at locations around Trent Vale
• Trent Vale Festival – events held around the area celebrating the uniqueness and heritage of Trent Vale
• Schools projects – working within schools and providing them with opportunities to get involved in projects around Trent Vale
• Rare breed Trent Vale grazing cattle herd
• Over 50 new angling pegs, including disabled pegs and access improvements. Angling events and training sessions
• Heritage trails and healthy walking events
• Improvements to key nationally important wetland sites and creation of a wetlands trail
• Renovation of the Willow Works Heritage Centre – Beckingham, Nottinghamshire
• New and improved moorings on the tidal stretch of the River Trent.

The final stage of the funding application process marks the culmination of 7 years of work originally instigated by the OnTrent initiative in 2002. Since that time a new partnership has been developed and extensive consultation has taken place with local communities to gather their views, observations and experiences of the Trent Vale.
Trent Vale Project Manager Rob Fitzsimons said: "The partnership is confident that it has put together as strong a submission as possible and we are all excited about the potential that this scheme could bring with it. We are all hopeful that within the near future we will be able to follow Trent Vale heritage trails, visit Trent Vale festival events, read the guide to Trent Vale and get involved in the hundreds of volunteering opportunities that will be made available."

The Trent Vale is a unique landscape shaped by its natural, cultural and industrial heritage, with the River Trent, a major highway since Roman times, rich in archaeological and historical features such as old ferry crossings, towpath bridges and distinctive 'clapper gates'.

River Trent could re-establish community links

The aim of the TVLP is to celebrate this uniqueness and utilise the River Trent as a means to re-establish community links which have gradually been lost, leaving villages isolated and disconnected from each other.

TVLP will learn at the end of September 2009 if the submission has been successful, with projects being implemented from early January 2010.