Today (February 7) Chester Cathedral announced a £250,000 grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund to help repair and restore 30 St Werburgh Street, a historic city centre building.

Project Revive is the first stage in the revitalisation of 30 St Werburgh Street.

The project, made possible thanks to money raised by National Lottery players, seeks to deliver better community engagement, improve sustainability and greater public access to the Cathedral's heritage.

Chester Cathedral announced a £250,000 grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund to help repair and restore 30 St Werburgh Street (Nub News)

30 St Werburgh Street is a landmark historic building in Chester, formerly Kings School, the Cathedral Choir School and more recently a bank.

Without this funding, its historic features could suffer deterioration, risking the loss of an important part of the city's architectural and social history.

This grant enables the Cathedral to undertake a programme of repair and conservation works, focusing on structural integrity, windows, glazing and stonework.

It also funds a brand-new role, in the form of community engagement and heritage development officer role.

This will help deliver public heritage engagement, exhibition and an oral history programme, based around the buildings previous uses.

This grant enables the Cathedral to undertake a programme of repair and conservation works (Image via: Chester Cathedral))

The grant will also fund a number of Cathedral projects, such as sustainability planning, testing connectivity with the Cathedral, piloting pop-up enterprise activities, enhancing business and stakeholder partnerships (consultation/workshops), reviewing volunteer offer and producing a legacy plan.

The Dean of Chester, the Very Revd Dr Tim Stratford, said: "Thanks to National Lottery players, we can repair and reoccupy the former bank building attached to the Cathedral's West End, further develop our community work, give our volunteers better facilities and start to explore how we fully realise our use of this magnificent piece of heritage.

"We're exceptionally grateful to The National Lottery Heritage Fund as it allows us to move forward with the vision for Chester Cathedral to be more visible and accessible in its historic city centre setting and to re-animate a significant part of the Cathedral that until recently was not within our care."