Lottery funding has been secured for coastal town’s at-risk heritage site
Great Yarmouth’s historic Winter Gardens – the last surviving Victorian ironwork glasshouse on a UK seaside promenade – is to receive a £12.3 million grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund to restore it to its former glory.
The project is being run by Great Yarmouth Borough Council and is called ‘Reimagining the People’s Palace’, providing a change of fortunes for a building on Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register.
The final stages of detailed design for the run-down Grade II-listed building on the Norfolk coast will get under way in the coming weeks ahead of restoration work beginning. Original features, including cast and wrought ironwork, will be replaced along with lost details of timber screens, combined with new services for the community.
The indoor gardens will be designed to take people on a journey, showing how plants have shaped our history and define our future.
Cllr Carl Smith, leader of Great Yarmouth Borough Council, said: “We are absolutely delighted The National Lottery Heritage Fund is providing the Winter Gardens project with this additional funding. Such an important and complex piece of work would simply not be possible without the Heritage Fund showing this level of support for the vision for the building.
“Great Yarmouth’s Winter Gardens are an integral part of our history and loved by generations of people, not just in the town, but across the region and beyond. This exciting regeneration will be a stunning addition to what we are able to offer residents and visitors, and demonstrates our commitment to regenerati
