Grant Awards in 2022

Steps to Sustainability is a National Lottery Heritage Fund programme delivered by the Social Enterprise Academy. It was designed to address the challenge of building a sustainable and resilient heritage sector, especially in the aftermath of the Covid19 pandemic.

The Steps to Sustainability programme provided a pathway of support to encourage participating heritage organisations to increase their business awareness, be ambitious, look ahead and deliver exciting new projects.

The WMT project was centred on an often-overlooked facet of the multi-sided Mansion – the ecology of the resident bats. We aimed to improve the bat observation facilities, based around the state-of-the-art CCTV cameras, and widen access to these fascinating creatures. We hoped that this would broaden the interest of the historic building by encouraging more visitors with an interest in ecology.

The Steps to Sustainability programme has given us a broad-based business expertise course, delivered by the Social Enterprise Academy. Over the year one of our trustees and our operations manager attended, and several other trustees participated in some of the skill sessions. It provided ongoing expert and peer group support, skills sessions, other resources and toolkits, as well as a grant from the NHLF. This enabled us to develop and enhance our bat experience at the Mansion.

We are delighted to have received the grant and have found the programme valuable. It is clearly applicable across our activity base, so the benefit will last into the future. The Roger Ransome Bat Observatory has been refurbished and a new interactive audio-visual display installed, in addition to our existing high definitions batcams. Read more about it in Seeing the Bats.

To learn more about the Mansion bats, click here.

Stroud District Council have supported the Woodchester Mansion Trust since it was established in 1989. This regular grant, from the community resilience and well-being budget, helps with the day to day business of running the Mansion.

In addition, in autumn 2022 SDC approved a £50k grant to assist in development of the north range. Now the roof is secure the trustees are looking at the feasibility of fitting out the space underneath for letting. The income generated would assist in delivering the forward plan for conservation of the Mansion. There is also an urgent need to investigate alternative heating plans for the Mansion.