Mansion restoration wins vote to scoop award at ceremony
THE restoration of a Cardiff mansion has won a public vote at an awards ceremony to recognise the people protecting Wales’ heritage.
The project to restore Grade II*-listed neo-Gothic mansion Insole Court, in Llandaff, saw the property saved by community effort and restored from dereliction to provide a community hall, café and visitor centre.
It was one of 15 projects shortlisted at the Heritage Angel Awards held in Caerphilly Castle.
Chaired by Baroness Kay Andrews, a panel of judges gave awards to five projects, recognising the achievements of young people, apprentices, volunteers and historic building restoration work.
Thornhill Primary School won the Best Contribution to a Heritage Project by Young People award for their Armistice Cantata, a musical play based on popular tunes from World War I.
Women’s Archive Wales won the Best Heritage Research, Interpretation or Recording Project award for their Voices from the Factory Floor project, in which volunteers captured the memories of hundreds of women who did factory work between 1945 and 1975.
Matthew Roberts and Brett Burnell were given the award in the Best Craftsperson or Apprentice category, thanks to their work at St Fagans National Museum of History where they have built a reconstruction of the great hall of Prince Llywelyn’s 13th-century Anglesey palace complex, to be used for history lessons and to host school group sleepovers.
St Fagans National Museum of History won the Best Rescue of a Historic Building over £5m, for its transformation of the museum’s grade II-listed main building to create spectacular light-filled spaces housing the museum’s rich social history and archaeology collections and a new learning centre.
In presenting the awards, Baroness Andrews said: “The judges were knocked out by the range and quality of all the projects and people nominated for an award. It was agonising to have to make a choice from so many projects that demonstrate genuine commitment and enthusiasm for the heritage. We chose projects that we felt would inspire others to do the same or that tackled heritage at risk, but everyone who was nominated and shortlisted for the awards deserves a big thank you for their achievements.”
The awards were sponsored by the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation.
This year’s successful Welsh projects, excluding the public vote winner, will now go on to be considered for the prize of overall winner alongside their English, Northern Irish and Scottish counterparts at the London ceremony on Tuesday, November 27.