THE millworkers' tenement at the New Lanark Heritage Site is to be restored as part of a £5 million funding boost for Scottish town centres.
The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) will also fund the regeneration of Academy Street in Inverness, Kirkintilloch Town Hall and the Davidson Cottage Hospital in Girvan.
The £1.6m grant for New Lanark will be used to restore Double Row - the last vacant and derelict tenement row in the 18th-century mill village. Seven of the eight buildings will be developed for residential use, while the last remaining one, Museum Stair, will feature in a 3D virtual tour.
Lorna Davidson, director of the New Lanark Trust, said: "This is a big step forward for New Lanark Trust in finally achieving the restoration of Double Row, the last tenement block which remains to be brought back into use.
"New Lanark is a Unesco World Heritage Site, and conservation standards require to be world-class.
"It is extremely encouraging that HLF recognises and supports the significance of the works that we are planning to carry out.
"In addition we will be using an innovative mixture of 21st-century digital technology and oral history to help people understand how New Lanark families lived in the past."
Meanwhile, Highland Council has funding of £1.67m to address the dilapidated Academy Street area of Inverness — one of the oldest streets in the city.
Elsewhere, the restoration of Kirkintilloch Town Hall has also been approved, with the HLF pledging £835,600 and a development grant of £41,500. The building will become a community heritage and arts venue, complete with an industrial heritage museum.
Girvan's Davidson Cottage Hospital will receive £1m and be transformed into a business Enterprise Centre.
Colin McLean, head of the HLF in Scotland, said: "Historic buildings give our town and city centres their character. They differentiate one town from another, giving each a sense of history that communities can identify with.
"Investing lottery money to revitalise them not only has an important impact on the local economy through jobs, tourism and investment, but because of their heritage nature, once restored they make a place much more attractive to live, visit and work."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article