News - Pleasley Colliery Wins EMCBE Heritage Award

We are delighted to announce that Woodhead Heritages’ £860K repair and regeneration project at Pleasley Colliery won the Heritage Award at the 2011 EMCBE (East Midlands Centre for Constructing the Built Environment) Awards dinner on 28 October 2011.

Celebrating the best of construction, the Awards are open to all involved in delivering construction and contributing to the built environment in the East Midlands. The Heritage Award in particular celebrates schemes of repair which significantly improve the aesthetic quality of a building/project. With eight finalists for the Heritage Award the competition was tough, so winning the Award was particular special for Woodhead Heritage, a Robert Woodhead brand.

As a scheduled monument, the repair of Pleasley Colliery located in the north of Nottinghamshire, was a very new and unique project for Woodhead. Simon Butler of Woodhead Heritage comments, “We’re delighted to have received the Constructing Excellence Heritage Award on behalf of all those that played a part in the work at Pleasley. It was a hugely enjoyable, challenging project, and was a real team effort, where everyone fully played their part. We are particularly pleased for the individuals that worked on the project as they really did work tirelessly to solve complex problems and ensure we followed sound conservation principles. The regeneration has secured the site for the future and opens the way for a Visitor Centre. A number of jobs have already been created in the community too.”

Simon continued, “We'd also like to congratulate the Pleasley Pit Trust for winning the Heritage Angels award for the project on the 31st October.”

Lead judge Fred Markland commented on the night regarding the winning project, ” These buildings of course, provide the most difficult challenge not only to the surrounding communities, but also in terms of intervention as in many instances they appear on a much larger scale with relatively uncommon repair elements to focus on. In the past it has been only to easy to discard much of what is now cherished and worthy of preserving from our industrial past and without attention, we may lose important links to the past which can provide much needed tourism opportunities to challenged areas.”

After the Awards evening, Fred Markland highlighted, “The submission received from Robert Woodhead demonstrated very clearly what issues and effective repairs had been carried out on the project and that the quality and execution were in line with current conservation standards with the key issue being the retention and repair of existing fabric.”

Steve Saunders, Partner at William Saunders, the Architects, commented “We are delighted to have been involved in the conservation works at Pleasley Colliery. This was a challenging and hugely interesting project for all members of the Design Team and Contractor Team to be involved with that secures the future of the Pleasley site for many years to come.”

The project was funded by East Midlands Development Agency and the Homes and Community Agency and the site is currently managed by The Land Trust.

Woodhead Heritage will now go on to represent the East Midlands region at this year’s Constructing Excellence National Awards in London on 25 November 2011.

For more details regarding the project, please see our Pleasley Colliery case study

From:http://www.responsesource.com/releases/rel_display.php?relid=68211

News - English Heritage 'angels' announced by Andrew Lloyd Webber

Projects to save a 45-acre Victorian cemetery and a Nottinghamshire coal pit are among the winners of new Angel Awards run by English Heritage.

The project to save Bristol's Arnos Vale Cemetery and a group which has fought to save Pleasley Colliery in Mansfield were among six winners.

The awards aim to recognise people and groups who have saved a place that "was at risk of being lost forever".

Andrew Lloyd Webber and Melvyn Bragg were among the judges.

Winners in four categories were picked from a shortlist of 16 who were announced at a ceremony at the Palace Theatre in London.

More than 200 projects were entered into the competition and groups had to show how they had worked to preserve the structures eligible for the English Heritage At Risk Register.

The winners were presented with statuettes.

Mr Lloyd Webber said: "All 16 shortlisted groups were exceptional and the judges had a hard time deciding between them.

"But in the end the winners stood out for their passion, perseverance and imagination, for the scale of the challenges they had taken on and for the legacy they leave behind - a secure future for beautiful historic buildings, which without them could so easily have simply disappeared."

Specialist skills

St Stephen's Restoration and Preservation Trust, which helped raise £5.6m to save 19th Century building St Stephen's Rosslyn Hill, in Hampstead, London, was among the winners.

Judges chose the project, along with Arnos Vale Cemetery, as joint winners in the "best rescue of any other entry from the Heritage at Risk register".

Meanwhile, judges chose Westenhanger Castle and Mediaeval Barns as the "best craftsmanship employed on a heritage rescue".

They said the project had "employed the highest level of craftmanship", sheer hard work and imagination to save the 16th Century Smythe Barn in Hythe, Kent.

Left Bank Leeds, which has given a new lease of life to the former Church of St Margaret of Antioch, won the Angel Award for "best rescue of a place of worship".

More than 120 volunteers have been working together to restore the church and also make it a place for art and music for the community.

One of the 16 projects was chosen for a special Angel Award, which was picked by English Heritage members and subscribers of the Telegraph newspaper.

This went to the project to save Tyntesfield Orangery in north Somerset. The scheme, run by the National Trust, the City of Bath College and Nimbus Conservation, aimed to save the abandoned building while teaching people specialist craft skills for the heritage sector.

Simon Thurley, English Heritage chief executive, said all the winners "brilliantly showed" how local people with a passion could rescue important parts of England's history.

From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-15524504

News -English Heritage praises Pleasley Colliery restoration

Preservation work at a colliery on the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire border has been praised by English Heritage.

Pleasley Colliery's restoration, which has been carried out by a group of volunteers, was said to be a "great example" of how to preserve the rich industrial history of the region.

The colliery, near Mansfield, is one of 129 buildings listed on the East Midlands' "at risk" register.

See: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-15367359 for a video report

English Heritage Angel Awards - North leverton Windmill/Pleasley Colliery/Bestwood Colliery

Several local buildings are up for this award:  

Pleasley Colliery, Nottinghamshire, was immaculately-restored by local volunteers
When people in the Mansfield area got together in 1996, to rescue run-down Pleasley Colliery, which closed 1983, everyone agreed it was a good idea. They weren’t so sure, however, when they actually went to inspect the premises.

“What a mess!” recalls Robert Metcalfe, one of the Friends of Pleasley Pit. “Floor plates missing, engine parts missing, trees growing through parts of the engines, the remaining part of the roof on the verge of collapse, everything covered in rust and pigeon guano.”

Fast forward 15 years, and many thousands of hours of what Robert calls “unstinting, back-breaking efforts” by the Friends, and you have today’s immaculately-restored heritage site, in which engines and engine houses are back in rust-free, pigeon-free working order.

“The future of the buildings and structures is now assured”, says Robert. “A whole generation who will never know ‘how it used to be’ will at least to be able to marvel at these survivors of the great age of steam.”

North Leverton Windmill, Nottinghamshire, is still grinding corn after almost two centuries.

Whole industries have come and gone in the meantime, but since it was built in 1813, North Leverton Windmill, near Retford, has never stopped working.

“It is one of the few mills, if not the only one, in the country, that has never stopped milling and has never been restored”, says Julie Barlow, one of the many devoted Friends of North Leverton Windmill

That the sails still revolve is due to the huffing and puffing of several generations of volunteers, who had to step up their efforts to gale-force levels recently, when it was discovered that two of the sails were rotten, and the main structural beams had holes the size of fists.

Endless abortive application forms were filled in, until, with the help of grants from English Heritage and the Building Better Communities organization, plus numerous Friends fund-raising events, the target £100,000 was reached.

“The repairs haven’t been completed, but the doors remain open, and the windmill is still doing what it does best, grinding corn”, says Julie. “Come rain or shine, if the wind is blowing, the sails are turning every Saturday.”

The winding engine at Bestwood Colliery, Nottinghamshire, helped make it the most productive mine in the world

No one was able to save the British coal industry, but in this part of the Midlands, they did manage to prevent a historic piece of mining heritage from ending up on the scrapheap.

Enter, hissing, the steam-powered engine that for nearly a century (between the 1870’s and the 1960’s) powered the winding mechanism at the Bestwood Colliery, lowering colliers into the shaft (in a metal cage), and bringing mined coal up to the surface.

Today, Bestwood lies dormant, but it was once the most productive mine in the whole world, being the first to excavate one million tons of coal in a 12-month period. Key to its continued productivity was the reliability of its winding engine, and that tradition has been continued post-closure, thanks to the work of the Bestwood Winding Engine Volunteer Group, headed by stalwart Robert Gow, which took over the site more than 20 years ago.

Not only do Robert and his team keep the engine and the premises in full working order, but they open up the engine house to the public, free of charge, every Saturday from Easter to October.


Telegraph subscribers can vote at http://subscriber.telegraph.co.uk/loyalty/, and follow the links, or by post to PO Box 604, The Daily Telegraph Angel Awards, 111 Buckingham Palace Road, London SW1W 0XE. Please remember to give your name, address, telephone and subscriber numbers. The deadline is midday October 17. One vote per subscriber.

English Heritage members can vote online at www.english-heritage.org.uk/angelawardsvote, or by post to English Heritage Angel Awards, Customer Services, PO Box 569, Swindon SN2 2YP.

The English Heritage Angel Awards ceremony is on Oct 31 at the Palace Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, London W1. Tickets are available exclusively for Telegraph subscribers and English Heritage members, at £5 each. Call 0870 333 1183 to book, Telegraph subscribers should quote their subscriber number.

All from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/angel-awards/