TRUSTEES at the Museum of North Craven Life at The Folly in Settle have welcomed the granting of £35,000 of emergency response funding from Arts Council England.

The money will cover core costs for the next six months and help set up a project to move more of the museum’s resources online.

Heather Lane, chairman of the museum board, said: “We are very relieved to have this support from Arts Council England, as it will help The Folly to survive this period when the museum and coffee house have had to be closed.“We were facing some very difficult decisions, as we currently have no income from visitors, which normally helps us meet the cost of running our wonderful grade one listed building.”

She added: “We are hugely grateful to everyone who has continued to buy a lottery ticket, as the award has been made available thanks to the National Lottery.”

Heather, who only recently joined the team at The Folly, moved to North Yorkshire five years ago and responded to an advert in September last year for a new honorary curator to succeed Anne Read, who had been in the post for 42 years.

“She is a very hard act to follow – Anne should be recognised as a ‘national living treasure’ for her encyclopaedic knowledge of the history and heritage of North Craven. I count myself very lucky to be able to work alongside her while I learn about the museum and its collections, which are owned and managed by North Craven Building Preservation Trust, set up in 1976 to save The Folly.

"This has been an amazing opportunity to volunteer for a really inspiring organisation. The curator’s role is to care for the collections and make them available to the public, through research and publication, and by organising exhibitions and events in the museum.”

Heather trained at the British Library, and qualified as a chartered librarian before moving into work with museums and archives.

“For most of my career, I’ve lived and worked in Cambridge, first as a college librarian and then as Keeper of Collections at the Scott Polar Research Institute, where I set up the new Polar Museum, dedicated to the history, art and science of the Arctic and Antarctic.

“More recently, I managed the redevelopment of the University Museum of Zoology Cambridge, which was opened in 2018 by Sir David Attenborough, but I have also worked as the Chief Executive for Scarborough Museums Trust and now act as a consultant for the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

“I’d been a regular visitor to the Museum of North Craven Life for about ten years, and love The Folly, as it’s such a distinctive building with a fascinating history.”

Heather says she is particularly drawn to some of the nooks and crannies in parts of the museum that remain closed to the public for now, such as the tiny study built for The Folly’s first owner, Richard Preston.

“My ambition is to raise enough funding to make the whole building accessible and to put more of our outstanding local history collections on display.”

She had been in post for about two months when she was asked to join the board of trustees, and at the end of January was elected board chairman.

“It’s been a bit of a whirlwind, since I wasn’t anticipating that we would be dealing with a pandemic,” she said.

“The trustees are all volunteers who take on responsibility for everything that the trust does, and particularly for ensuring that it is in a good financial state, so for me most of this period of lockdown has been spent applying for charitable funding to keep us going.

"Having to close down at the end of March has hit us particularly hard, as we are likely to lose a whole season when we should have been welcoming visitors; we have also had to cancel all our ticketed events and lectures.

“We hope that we will be able to get back on our feet quickly once we are allowed to reopen, and we’ll be putting measures in place to meet the Covid-19 safety Kitemark standards, as soon as the details are announced,” said Heather.

“We’re also keen to welcome back our brilliant band of volunteers, who keep The Folly going, but we know that quite a few of them need to continue to be shielded for some time to come, so there are openings for anyone who would like to start volunteering with us later this year.”

Anyone who would like to volunteer at can email: hdo@ncbpt.org.uk. People can also support the museum by making a donation, by joining the supporters group, or buying a voucher for the coffee shop. Visit: www.thefolly.org.uk/support-us/