After
three years of planning, Cambo Heritage Trust (formerly Cambo Institute) in
Fife has been given the go-ahead by Heritage Lottery Fund to commence work on
the replacement of the Victorian range of glasshouses in the Walled Garden and
also to take the Cambo Stables Project to tender.
Work
to dismantle the glasshouses will commence in February 2015 and a series of
activities/workshops is being planned around this. Work will then begin on their replacement and
it is anticipated that the new glasshouses will be in place and ready to use by
August 2015.
Architects
Page/Park have now been commissioned to further develop the plans for an
education and training centre based in the historic stables buildings on Cambo to
create a visitor hub providing improved facilities for the growing number of
school and community activities, student gardeners, volunteers and visitors
benefiting from and enjoying the Estate and its historic landscape. Established
in 1998, the charity now provides a host of learning and volunteering
opportunities in heritage, the environment, arts, culture and horticulture.
Currently,
the Trust provides work experience and training for garden students, holds
weekly sessions in Green Gym, Forest Education and regular art and
environmental workshops for local schools throughout the year. The Victorian gardens, and breathtaking snowdrop
woods, now have a worldwide reputation and the demand for horticulture
placements and volunteering has outgrown the existing facilities.
The
beautiful buildings, dating from 1765 and unused since before the Second World
War, will be given a new lease of life to provide a hub for Cambo Heritage
Trust and its ever increasing training and educational activities.
Fundraising is now in full swing
to raise the remaining shortfall required to begin work on the restoration of
the stables buildings in the autumn of 2015.
Sir
Peter Erskine, Chairman of Cambo Heritage Trust, was delighted to hear the good
news saying,
“It is so exciting, after
many months of hard work overcoming all the obstacles, to have final permission
to start the rebuilding of the glasshouses and to commission the architects to
take forward the drawings for the reincarnation of the stables to the next
stage - going out to tender. The family are delighted with this huge step which
will see the estate becoming once more a social, economic, artistic and
training hub in a 21st century reflection of the functions of
estates such as Cambo in earlier centuries.”
Find out more about Cambo Heritage Trust
