A brief history of the AIA Restoration Grant Scheme 2009-2024

Back in 2009 one of our members approached the AIA Chairman offering to make a sum of £30,000 available to grant aid projects. The anonymous donor was keen that the money would be for a significant part of capital works allied to volunteer input and if the scheme attracted worthwhile applicants it might be continued in subsequent years! This was a somewhat tentative beginning to a grants scheme that has seen the AIA becoming a truly significant player in the preservation of the industrial heritage. The initial modest foray into the restoration field in 2009 produced four very disparate awards. Though some of these projects took longer than others, all were eventually completed and reported as such in IA News. In the following years the attendant publicity generated an ever-more numerous and wide-ranging list of applications, many seeking quite substantial funds and the maximum award per project was raised from £15,000 to £20,000 in 2014 and will be raised to £30,000 for 2024. There was also a second category of awards – Minor Grants – created in 2020 with a maximum of £7500 which is being raised to £10,000 for 2024.

The range of applications also greatly widened. Thus IA News over the next few years was able to report on: the repairs to narrowboat Tarporley, the restoration to working order of the papermaking machine at Frogmore Mill, the rebuilding of the wagon weighbridge at Wharf Station on the Tallyllyn Railway, the excavation and interpretation of Wellington Wheel Pit at Mellor Mill, the restoration of a rare Robey under-type steam engine, the restoration of the Ellen Road Petrie Beam Engine and the restoration of the Windermere Steam launch Osprey. In recent years the generous increase in funds from our original benefactor was augmented by those from a second anonymous donor and we have witnessed a huge increase in applications to the Grant scheme. Transport projects remain a large component of these applications. These, in addition to the sites and artefacts mentioned above, include:

• Canals:Locks, such as the unique graving dock lock on the Stover Canal and Bowbridge Lock at Stroud, the Diglis Basin Crane the Saul Junction swing bridge, the Wappenshall canal warehouses and canal boats as such the narrowboat President and the lighter Susan.

• Railways: Railway buildings, structures and equipment, such as the Ferryhill turntable and in Swindon the GWR Pattern Store; standard and narrow gauge railway engines such as a 1940 diesel GWR Railcar, the 1949 William Murdoch, the 1906 locomotive Desmond, the 15 inch gauge Thorpe Light Railway locomotive, the WW1 armoured Simplex rail tram car, a rare tamping engine, railway carriages and wagons of all shapes and sizes including the LNER Thompson coach, the Lion Salt Works salt wagon and the Ryde Pier Tram.
• Vessels: such as sailing barges Dawn and Brittannia, the steam launch Lady Elizabeth, the lifeboat Swan, the steamship Freshspring and the steam tug Kerne.

• Road: the 1827 engine house and shaft of the Thames Tunnel London, vehicles such as an electric coal lorry, a 1929 St Johns ambulance and a 1927 cast iron Bus shelter,  

Almost all aspects of the industrial heritage have been covered by AIA grants:

• Repairs to windmills such as Billingford, Old Buckenham and Danzey Green, watermills, and steam mills such as Beeleigh.

• Mill buildings, engines and associated machinery also feature regularly in the list, including mills such as Grane Mill at Haslingden the Museum of Carpet in Kidderminster and chimneys as at Bancroft Mill, the 1802 Boulton & Watt engine at the Verdant Works in Dundee, the Leigh Spinners Mill engine, a 1930s paper pulp beater at the Apsley Paper Trail, a 1920s sock-knitting machine at the John Smedley Archive Trust and the line shafting at Bristol Underfall Yard.
• Agricultural portable steam engines and machinery such as the Empress of Britain and the road roller Stumbles, a 1952 steam crane at the Amberley Museum.
• Mines and Mining equipment such as Big Pit Headgear, the roof of Hemingfield Colliery Winding Engine House, cranes and excavators such as the Bath Quarry crane, the Bucket Excavator at the National Mining Museum England, and the water-powered pump-rod system at Wheal Martyn china clay works.

• Furnaces and kilns such as the 1820s blast furnace stack at Brymbo, a limekiln at Gradbach.

There have been some more unusual but nevertheless significant awards: The Colonsay iron light chamber, the rare Penistone cinema organ, the Coker twine works, the Woodbury gashouse, the lead smelter remains at Crich, Grane Mill chimney at Haslingden, and the 1812 header pond for steam engines at Crofton Pumping Station.

Details of all the awards can be found below: