Ceredigion Council to boost county heritage funding

ENHANCING the county’s heritage collections looks set to be boosted by a quarter of a million pounds from Ceredigion County Council’s capital funds.

At cabinet next week (Tuesday, September 7) senior councillors are being asked to back a £250,000 contribution to the £1.9million ‘Perthhyn’ project which focuses on creating educational and learning capacity, the Ceredigion Heritage Collections Centre and working with groups to assess the significance of the collections held.

The project is the second stage of a three part transformations project, with the first part ‘New Approaches’ completed in 2018, a report to cabinet states.

The Ceredigion Heritage Collections Centre will be somewhere people will get a “behind the scenes” experience of the 65,000 plus historic artefacts relating to local history looked after by Ceredigion Museum.

The report adds that there is currently a permanent display of around ten per cent of the publicly owned collection with the new facility providing access to the other 90 per cent, in a scheme similar to initiatives in Birmingham and Edinburgh.

It will explore the concept of belonging and shared community values with tours, workshops and educational activities, as well as the development of a new storage facility.

This will free up Bath Street Garage, Aberystwyth and Tre’r Ddol Chapel, the sale of which will mostly offset the council’s contribution – required in 2024/25 – according to the report which calls the scheme “very good value for money.”

The majority of funding – £1.1million – is coming from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, along with £800,000 from Welsh Government, Trusts and Foundations.