Category: Industrial heritage

More Industrial Heritage Sites Receive Government Grant Support

More Industrial Heritage Sites Receive Government Grant Support

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130 cultural venues, museums, and libraries will receive a share of £127.8 million to protect them for present and future generations. This latest Government support forms part of the ‘Arts Everywhere Fund’. This is in addition to the heritage grants announced earlier in the month which were funded by the DCMS/Wolfson Museums & Galleries Improvement Fund.

These new monies form part of three funding streams administered and delivered by Arts Council England on behalf of the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport. These are:

  • The Museum Estate and Development Fund (MEND) which has allocated £25.5 million to support 28 museums to undertake vital infrastructure works, and improve the visitor experience.
  • The Creative Foundations Fund (CFF) which has allocated £96 million to 74 arts and cultural venues to help theatres, performing arts venues, galleries and grassroots music venues address urgent infrastructure needs. 
  • The Libraries Improvement Fund (LIF) which has allocated a share of £6.3 million to 28 library services to help upgrade buildings and technology to better meet the needs of the community.

The industrial heritage museums and sites receiving support are:

  • Baltic Flour Mills Visual Arts Trust, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne – £3,649,800
  • Black Country Living Museum, Dudley – £454,159
  • Greater Manchester Transport Society – £244,000
  • London Transport Museum – £999,999
  • People’s History Museum, Manchester – £2,491,670
  • Port Sunlight Village Trust – £499,999
  • The Brickworks Museum, Southampton – £280,000
  • The Mill Arts Centre, Banbury – £135,000
  • Watermill Theatre, Newbury – £300,000
  • Whitchurch Silk Mill – £210,045

For further details follow this link: Arts Everywhere Funding – GOV.UK

People’s History Museum, Manchester. Image copyright Dr Michael Nevell.

Industrial Heritage Sites to Recieve Grants From the DCMS/Wolfson Museums & Galleries Improvement Fund

Industrial Heritage Sites to Recieve Grants From the DCMS/Wolfson Museums & Galleries Improvement Fund

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24 local museums in England have been granted a share of £4 million through the DCMS/Wolfson Museums and Galleries Improvement Fund. The Fund brings together £2 million in match funding from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and independent, grant making charity, the Wolfson Foundation. It supports local museums by improving displays, enhancing collection care, and making exhibitions more accessible to visitors.

The five industrial heritage museums that have recieved £1,034,200 from this year’s grant round are:

  • British Motor Museum, West Midlands – £147,700
  • Black Country Living Museum, West Midlands – £272,000
  • SS Great Britain, South West – £46,300
  • National Tramway Museum, East Midlands – £210,600
  • Food Museum, East of England – £357,600

Full details of the all the museums receiving grants here: Local museums receive £4 million to improve accessibility to arts and culture – GOV.UK

The DCMS/Wolfson Museums and Galleries Improvement Fund provides capital funding for museums and galleries across England to improve displays, protect collections and make exhibitions more accessible to visitors. For 2025-27, DCMS and the Wolfson Foundation have each contributed £2 million to the Fund, which has benefitted more than 440 projects in its more than 24-year history.

One of the trolley bused that will be renovated at the Black Country Living Museum. Image courtesy of the Black Country Living Museum.

Museum Development Grants – Next Round Opening

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The next round of Museum Development grants for the English regions will be opening in the next few weeks. These include Open Grants, Small Grants, and bursaries from the five regional museum development networks in England, with grants ranging from £500 to £7000 depending on the region and type of activity. These are usually designed for accredited museums, or those sites working towards accredition.

Museum Development London are running a free online seminar detailing their grants for 2026-27 on the 23 April. To book follow this link: MDL grants programme 2026-27 coffee morning

Museum Development South East have two Open Grant streams. Round one is currently open and closes on 2 June. Round 2 opens on 21 September and closes on 4 November. For details on both follow this link: Open Grants – Museum Development South East

Applications for Museum Development Midlands Open Grants start on 30 April, with a deadline of 29 June. More details here: Open Grants · MDM

The Museum Development South West Open Grants scheme deadline is 15 April, but applications for their Capacity Grants opens on the 29 April. More details here: Capacity Builder – Museum Development South West

Museum Development North’s Continuing Professional Development Bursaries is a rolling programme, so applications can be submitted at any time from April to 3 December 2026. The scheme may close earlier if all funds have been allocated. Further details here: Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Bursaries – Museum Development North

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Get Involved With Heritage Open Days 2026

Get Involved With Heritage Open Days 2026

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The 2026 Heritage Open Days will take place from 11 to 20 September. Heritage Open Days is England’s largest community-led festival of history and culture, involving thousands of local volunteers and organisations. Every year in September it brings people together to celebrate their heritage, community, and history. Stories are told, traditions explored, and histories brought to life. All the events are free.

269 industrial heritage sites in England took part in Heritage Open Days (HoD) 2025, offering guided walks, talks, and exhibitions as well as hands on experiences. If you would like to take part then the HoD website has full details on how to list a site, event, and/or acitvity.

For further details on how to take part as an event and/or site organiser follow this link: Get involved

AIA’s 10th East-West Workshop on Industrial Archaeology

AIA’s 10th East-West Workshop on Industrial Archaeology

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The next East-West Workshop on Industrial Archaeology, co-run by the Association for Industrial Archaeology (AIA), will be on the 9th May. This is 10th online, free, workshop in the series and takes place exactly five years after the AIA co-hosted the first edition in May 2021.

The East-West Workshops on Industrial Archaeology were not created to endure; at least, not in a purely virtual format. When the first workshop was held in May 2021, it was mainly a way to prevent the COVID pandemic from disrupting our academic activities and international exchanges. However, the experience exceeded expectations. Five years on, the AIA are launching the 10th edition of a series of workshops that has become increasingly popular in the West, the East, and beyond.

To mark this special occasion, this workshop focuses on the archaeology, heritage, and history of alcoholic beverages. The speakers will examine the architecture of malt production in Britain and continental Europe (a key component of beer, whiskey, and other spirits), the history of winemaking and wine consumption in Spain, and the landscape of baijiu production in China. While the workshop acknowledges the serious consequences of alcohol abuse, it also recognises it as a significant element in many cultures worldwide, their social practices, and their heritage.

The East-West workshop series aims to exchange ideas and knowledge between Western and Eastern colleagues to develop a more international and diverse industrial archaeology. The event is jointly organised by the Institute for Cultural Heritage and History of Science & Technology (USTB, China) and the UK Association for Industrial Archaeology.

SPEAKERS & TALKS

  • Amber PATRICK (Association for Industrial Archaeology, Britain): “Malthouse Developments – The Late 18th Century to the Mid-20th Century”
  • Pablo ALONSO GONZÁLEZ (Spanish National Research Council, Spain): “Craft Vs. Industrial? A Critical History of Spanish Wine”
  • Yuchen WANG (University of Science and Technology Beijing, China): “Symbiotic Cityscape: Luzhou Baijiu Cultural Heritage as an Urban Cultural Landscape”

DATE & TIME

9 May 2026, Saturday. 10.00-12.00 London time

PLACE

Zoom (online meeting). More info and free registration:

Register on Eventbrite
Mills Now & Then – SPAB Call for Your Mill Histories

Mills Now & Then – SPAB Call for Your Mill Histories

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To celebrate Mills in 2026 the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) is producing a compilation of individual mills’ histories. The SPAB Mills Section wants to create a new and comprehensive picture of mills of all types throughout the UK, Ireland, and Europe and are calling for submissions from owners, volunteers, millwrights, or anyone interested in the history of a mill or a linked group of mills, to write about how they evolved.

SPAB would like to understand a mill’s origins and how the structure and uses have changed over its lifetime. This can be a post mill, smock or tower mill, a watermill or tide mill, or an industrial mill. The mill can be located in the UK, Ireland or Europe. The entry can be about mills stil existing, derelict, or lost.

The chosen entrants will receive a copy of the published booklet, which will be available at SPAB Mills Section events. A digital version of selected submissions will also be available.

The deadline for submissions is Friday 1 May 2026. All entries to be submitted via email to: nmwsubmissions@spab.org.uk

Further details can be found by following this link: Mills Now & Then – Call for your histories | The SPAB

Windmill in Lincoln. Image copyright Dr Michael Nevell.

Next Greenwich Industrial History Society Free Online Talk – 10 March

Next Greenwich Industrial History Society Free Online Talk – 10 March

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The next Greenwich Industrial History talk will be on Tuesday 10th March – 19.15 for 19.30. Jeffrey Borinsky will be talking about the Broadcast Engineering Museum, the 100th anniversary of Baird’s first demonstration of television and 90 years since the start of the world’s first regular high definition TV service from Alexandra Palace.  The Broadcast Engineering Museum is a hands-on museum where many exhibits are working.

Jeffrey Borinsky spent his working life designing equipment for use in TV studios. He is one of the founding trustees of the Broadcast Engineering Conservation Group. The BECG started the Broadcast Engineering Museum in 2021. The free talk – by Zoom, and open to members and non-members of GIHS – will start at 19:15 for 19:30 on Tuesday 10th March. For details of how to register, see below.

How to reserve your place for this free online talk

You can book a place now by emailing greenwichindustrial@gmail.com with the subject line “GIHS Broadcasting Engineering Museum talk”. Zoom log-in details will be sent just before the talk starts.

Friends of Bennerley Viaduct Launch Crowdfunder to Build New Footbridge

Friends of Bennerley Viaduct Launch Crowdfunder to Build New Footbridge

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The Friends of Bennerley Viaduct were formed in 2019 as a community charity to help save and make accessible the Bennerley Viaduct and its surrounding environment. The Bennerley Viaduct is a Grade II* listed former Railway Viaduct connecting Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire through the towns of Kimberley and Ilkeston. The Friends‘ goal is to preserve the viaduct and its immediate surrounding area for future generations. As part of this aim they are looking to secure funding to create a new crossing over the River Erewash and to pay for materials that will help to secure the river bank that the bridge will cross.

Not only will the new footbridge over the River Erewash increase access to the viaduct and its surrounding environment, but it will also help to secure the riverbank to prevent its erosion, and so help to secure the future of the viaduct. The Friends target is £10,000, which will act as match-funding for a National Lottery Heritage Fund bid.

To contribute follow this link: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/new-footbridge-next-to-bennerley-viaduct-second-pledge

Image of the proposed new footbridge beneath the ‘iron giant’. Image courtesy of the Friends of Bennerley Viaduct.
Museum Association Bids Farewell to the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust

Museum Association Bids Farewell to the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust

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The 2nd March 2026 marked the start of a new era within the Ironbridge Gorge World Heritage Site, as the National Trust took over the 10 museums, 35 scheduled monuments and listed buildings, and 400,000 archives of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust (IGMT). The museums closed for the last time under IGMT control on the 22 February, which was marked by a special parade and ceremony of staff, volunteers, and friends at Blists Hill open air museum, the final site to close on that day.

To celebrate 60 years of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, the Museums Association interviewed the Collections team for their thoughts on IGMT and its legacy. You can read the full article, and reminescences by Kate Cademan (Collections Curator) and Jo Smith (Registrar), here: https://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/people/2026/02/bidding-farewell-to-the-ironbridge-gorge-museum-trust/#

The National Trust is planning a phased reopening of each site over the following months. The  anticipated reopening timeline is as follows:    

  • Museum of the Gorge and Toll House from late April 2026  
  • Blists Hill, Museum of Iron and The Old Furnace from mid-May 2026  
  • Enginuity from summer 2026 (school visits from April 2026)  
  • Coalport China Museum, Jackfield Tile Museum, Darby Houses, Tar Tunnel and Broseley Pipeworks will open later.  

Further details here: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/shropshire-staffordshire/our-work/our-work-in-shropshire/ironbridge-museums

Staff, volunteers, and friends gather at Blists Hill to say farewell to IGMT, on 22 February 2026.

SAVE Britain’s ‘Heritage Buildings at Risk Register’ – Call for Entries

SAVE Britain’s ‘Heritage Buildings at Risk Register’ – Call for Entries

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SAVE Britain’s Heritage has issued a call for nominations for historic buildings at risk which will be considered for their 2026 Buildings at Risk register. SAVE want to bring attention to historic buildings at risk across the UK.

They are interested in vacant or partially vacant historical buildings that are at risk from stalled projects, neglect or lack of action. Unlike some other risk registers, the building does not need to be listed to be eligible,l which means that many threatened industrial structures could be included. Their central aim is to raise awareness of these forgotten spaces and provide a platform to advocate for their retention and reuse.  

To nominate a building:

  • Click on this link to the ‘Buildings at Risk’ register on their website
  • Check if your building is already on SAVE Britain’s Heritage Buuildings at Risk Register  
  • If it’s not already on the Register, fill in a quick form with what you know including a (copyright-free) photograph and as much address information as you can.  
  • You can also email your nomination to: amy.popham@savebritainsheritage.org