Horsham District Community Partnerships’ new Heritage Trails Project wins National Lottery support
How to explore and explain, inspire and encourage the local community and visitors to seek out and discover the amazing heritage of 204 square miles of Horsham district’s rich heritage? That was the challenge that six villages of the Horsham Districts Community Partnerships Forum set themselves. The answer was working with Horsham District Council’s Horsham Museum & Art Gallery and the newly formed Heritage Forum of 20 local societies to create trails. Funding was sought from the National Lottery to train volunteers on creating these trails, researching and investigating the good, interesting and important aspects of the District’s heritage.
Now, thanks to a Heritage Lottery Fund grant award of £44,900, this exciting project can go ahead.
Thanks to the money raised by the National Lottery players, the newly formed Heritage Trail partnership will be able to create 20 trails in the first instance. Through extensive high quality training they will be shown how to explore the heritage, what to look out for, how to explain to the casually interested what is in front of them, and how to design trails. They will then create a set of trails that will be printed and available free of charge as downloadable PDFs.
The really exciting aspect of the project is that the Partnership involves so many diverse groups, all of whom saw the potential to create a fantastic resource to explore a largely unknown area of Sussex that lies between Brighton and Gatwick.
This project though is not just for members of the Partnership, it is also for those who would like a new challenge in their life: those who enjoy their neighbourhood and feel passionate about telling others what is so fascinating about its heritage.
Without National Lottery players and the superb grant, this project would have remained a pipe dream, something talked about rather than a reality. Now thanks to this funding and the dedicated work of future volunteers, the district will have 20 trails that cover evidence of our past from Saxon Saints, Roman villas and Tudor martyrs, to suffrage campaigners – all forgotten aspects of a rich heritage that makes up Horsham district.
If you are interested in joining the project, please email info@horshamheritagetrails.org.uk, before the end of December, giving us your details.
Or alternatively write to:
Horsham District Heritage Trail
c/o Jeremy Knight
Horsham Museum & Art Gallery,
9 Causeway, Horsham,
West Sussex RH12 1HE
We will get back to you with details of our first public meeting.