10
Time was always an issue as we had a
fixed end date of June 2015 to work to, but
even more worrying was the accelerating
deterioration of the Castle walls, adversely
affected by the terribly cold winters of
2009 and 2010. Due to frost damage the
fronts of the stones were shearing off at
an alarming rate and we had to close some sections and net others. Could we wait, or
rather could the Castle cope with another winter as we worked on gathering funding
together? The South Curtain Wall was our biggest worry and the County Council,
after discussion with Heritage Lottery Fund took the decision, at its own risk to start
work on the walls. This was a risk, because if our funding bids had failed, the County
Council would have spent all its match funding on repair and have nothing left for
visitor improvements. The deterioration of the walls meant that the costs of the works
were rising and although we had requested a grant from HLF of £6m at Round 1, there
was now a need for substantially more and HLF told us that we would have to make
a very good case to achieve this. Worse news was to follow. When we began Lincoln
Castle Revealed the Crown Court had wanted to move out, the County Council
had been helping them to relocate and the Court building was to become part of the
new visitor offer and home to Magna Carta. The bid was ready for submission with
documents all printed when the Ministry of Justice changed its mind about moving
out. This was devastating, but just before Christmas 2010 we looked at the available
options which included everything from giving up to taking much longer to deliver the
works and missing the 800th anniversary
of Magna Carta in the process. The
Victorian prison had been out of scope as
we couldn't afford to do everything, so we
decided to re-phase the works, bringing
forward the prison. By mid January we
had new architectural drawings which
the Cathedral and English Heritage were
happy with and by early February Heritage
Lottery had agreed that we could have
until September to re-jig our plans. We
were back on track and happily, all agreed
that actually we liked our Plan B better
than Plan A! I will draw a veil over the
usual panic to get everything done on
time, but on September 30th, 2011 box
loads of documents were delivered to HLF
and by the following March to huge relief
on our part they approved a grant of £12m,
I think it was the biggest uplift that they
had ever awarded.
Overtaken
by events