THE £6.5 million refurbishment of Ordsall Hall Museum has beaten the Tower of London and Althorpe Hall to win a top national award.
Visitor numbers have more than doubled since the refurbished hall re-opened and it recently celebrated the 500th anniversary of the Great Hall and its first wedding, with plans for more special events over the coming months.
We wrote about the lovely buildingin Jonathan Schofield's The Good, The Standard and The Ugly column - here.
The historic Tudor mansion, which took two years to refurbish, gained the top prize at the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) Awards just months after winning the north west regional heat.
Judges said the restoration work, which involved repairing the roof, woodwork, stained glass and stoneware, had been carried out to the highest standard and breathed new life into the period home.
The gardens have also been restored to represent different periods in the Hall’s history, with Tudor herbs, Victorian fruit trees and Dig for Victory planters from when the Hall grounds were used as allotments in the First World War.
Funding came largely from a £4.1m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).
Visitor numbers have more than doubled since the refurbished hall re-opened and it recently celebrated the 500th anniversary of the Great Hall and its first wedding, with plans for more special events over the coming months.
“We’re now attracting 35,000 visitors a year to Ordsall Hall," said Councillor Ann-Marie Humphreys, assistant mayor for culture, " many of them local residents who have never been before. The Hall is being used by community groups for everything from story telling to ghost nights and is going from strength to strength.”
Sara Hilton, head of the Heritage Lottery Fund, North West, said:" We are delighted that Ordsall Hall has won this prestigious award. It is a reflection on the quality of the project with conservation and learning embedded into all aspects of the work. The Hall has been given a new lease of life and is now firmly at the heart of the community. We at HLF are proud to have played our part as a funder."
