A new heritage organisation launching at the Rochester Bridge Trust’s Bridge Chapel today (19 March) will offer hands-on heritage craft training thanks in part to a grant from the Rochester Bridge Trust.
The Herbert Baker Heritage Trust will provide training opportunities, hands-on experience with heritage craft skills and access to important historic sites for college-level students in Kent. The aim is to enable students to explore careers in conservation, craftsmanship and the built environment.
Heritage craft skills refer to various traditional crafts, which are often essential for maintaining historic structures. Many traditional crafts are at risk of dying out in the UK.
The Herbert Baker Heritage Trust will run Heritage Craft Skill training programme, a training week for heritage craft skills running from 27 April to 1 May. Young people from across Kent will get the opportunity to visit heritage sites, and get hands-on experience of traditional crafts ranging from timber frame woodwork to masonry.
The training programme, which is being supported by a grant from Rochester Bridge Trust, will involve local organisations such as Rochester Cathedral, Canterbury Cathedral, Chatham Historic Dockyard, Furniture Craft School, Building Crafts College, North Kent College and Mid Kent College.
Nicola Parks, Director of Charitable Projects at the Rochester Bridge Trust, said: “We are happy to be supporting, through a grant, the Herbert Baker Heritage Trust’s work on preserving important heritage skills in the community.”
The Herbert Baker Heritage Trust has been founded by family members of Sir Herbert Baker, one of the leading architects of the 20th century, who was born in Cobham, Kent and worked on the 1937 restoration of the Bridge Chapel
You can find out more about the Herbert Baker Heritage Trust, and the life of the architect whose work inspired the organisation, on its website at: https://www.herbertbakerheritagetrust.org