Image: A photo included in The Atchin Tan Heritage Project, Pride of Romany © Josephine Smith
The projects will explore untold stories and celebrate the people and places at the heart of our history, focusing on rural and coastal communities.
Thirty projects across England exploring working-class heritage have been funded by the latest round of Historic England’s Everyday Heritage grants programme.
Almost £500,000 has been awarded in total to projects including those exploring people connected to England’s oldest prison in
Hexham, Liverpool’s Overhead Railway, and the tradition of ‘Shrovetide Football’, an annual medieval football game still played in Ashbourne, Derbyshire.
Launched in 2022, the Everyday Heritage programme aims to celebrate working-class histories. The latest tranche of funding focusses on buildings or places in rural and coastal locations. Prior to the latest funding round, the programme has already funded over 100 projects at a total of £1.8 million.
Duncan Wilson, Chief Executive of Historic England, said the projects selected in this round “will shine a light on the stories of local, working-class people and their extraordinary contributions to our shared history.”
One of the selected projects is The ‘Atchin Tan Heritage Project’, led by Pride of Romany. It aims to preserve British Romany cultural heritage in Nantwich’s Sound Common through collaboration with community elders, historians, and local residents to capture histories and stories dating back to the 16th century.
The project will produce a booklet, install a commemorative plaque, create a documentary, and conclude with a gala event to showcase the community’s legacy and strengthen intercultural understanding for future generations.
Some of the 30 projects being funded by Everyday Heritage grants include:
Gentle Waters, North Yorkshire
Hexham: Prisons and People, Northumberland
The Atchin Tan Heritage Project, Cheshire
Under Our Umbrella, Merseyside
Tower @ Twenty: The Ballad of Jaywick Sands, Essex
The Holiday Makers, Norfolk
Margate’s Deaf Voices, Kent
Shrovetide; Past, Present & Place, Derbyshire
Reimagining Brockweir’s colourful past, Gloucestershire
Crossing Lives, Devon and Cornwall
More details on the selected project can be found on the Historic England website.
