Grant boost for castle restoration plan

MEMBERS of a campaign group who have been lobbying for years to save one of Rotherham’s most famous landmarks yesterday spoke of their excitement over plans for its restoration.

As reported in the Yorkshire Post earlier this month, Rotherham Council has drawn up 1.7m plans to restore former hunting lodge Boston Castle and turn it into a museum and education centre.

Those plans have now been given a massive boost after it was announced the project had won almost 600,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund to pay for some of the building work required.

The castle was built in the 1770s by Thomas Howard, the Earl of Effingham and it stands in Boston Park, which was one of South Yorkshire’s first public parks.

It was used as accommodation for park keepers, but in the mid-1990s the last occupants moved out, and since then the building has fallen into dereliction and has been vandalised.

The project to restore the building has been led by the Friends of Boston Castle and yesterday, the group’s secretary Janet Worrall said members were delighted with the 590,000 grant.

Mrs Worrall said: “The last occupants moved out in 1996 and the Friends group was formed in 2001. Since then we have done a lot of campaigning because it has been very neglected.

“I am very excited. It’s been a personal campaign for me. I have done a lot of research about the man who built it. It’s internationally important, nationally important and locally important.”

It is thought the Earl of Effingham met John Adams, who was part of the Boston Tea Party action by colonists in America against the British Government, and named the folly on his estate after it.

Mrs Worrall said she hoped the story would be publicised and lead to the castle becoming a stop on the American tourist trail in South Yorkshire.

She added: “We will tell the story of the castle in the museum and will have a classroom for community use. We hope to use a room upstairs as a meeting room to hire out.

“A Victorian extension will be demolished and the reclaimed brickworks will be used to build a new, low-level extension for the classroom and we hope to access the roof to take in the views.”

Fiona Spiers, head of the Heritage Lottery Fund in Yorkshire, said Boston Castle’s position on a ridge overlooking the Don Valley meant visitors would be able to see how the Industrial Revolution had affected South Yorkshire.