Category: News

West House wins Lottery Grant Bid

HLF Logo

The Heritage Lottery Fund has awarded The West House and Heath Robinson Museum Trust £1,130,100 to build a Heath Robinson Museum in Pinner Memorial Park! Wonderful news! Big thanks to everyone who has worked so hard over the past 15 years to get to this point.
We still need to raise £200,000 to be able to build the museum. If you’d like to help, you can donate online at https://mydonate.bt.com/charities/heathrobinsonmuseum. Thank you!

Harrow Libraries

NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN HARROW LIBRARIES – FOR INFORMATION
Changes agreed at Harrow Council Meeting on 6th June.
  • The Civic Centre Library is to close end of July and merge into Gayton Library (in St John’s Road) some time in August.
  • The local History Collection will move to the Headstone Manor Museum and will reopen later, by appointment only.
  • Harrow Libraries have new public use computers. After a service upgrade, reference resources, magazines and newspapers will all be available online both in the libraries and on home computers free on a proposed new services called Zinio.
  • The council is looking at commissioning out the libraries to a non-profit making company, with a saving of several £100,000s. The service would be closely monitored.
  • A new library system is planned which will enable Harrow to join the London Library Consortium so that library members will have access to over 5 million items.

69 West End Lane

The proposed development at 69 West End Lane has been refused for the following reason:
The proposed development, by reason its excessive bulk, height and scale
and its close proximity to the public highway, would appear as an overly dominant, incongruous and conspicuous addition to the streetscene to the detriment of the character of the area, and would therefore fail to accord with policies 7.4.B and 7.6.B of The London Plan 2011, policy CS1.B of The Harrow Core Strategy 2012, saved policy D4 of the Harrow Unitary Development Plan 2004, policy DM1 of the emerging Harrow Development Management Policies Plan 2013, and the adopted Supplementary Planning Document: Residential Design Guide 2010.

No doubt the applicants will now appeal to the Planning Inspectorate.

 

MINDFILLNESS MEDITATION AND HEALTHY WELL BEING

A registered nurse, together witha retired doctor, is setting up a group to
improve people’s medical wellbeing via meditation.  They are non-profit making
and intend to gain charitable status.
They meet weekly on Fridays from 7.30 to 9pm in the St John’s Ambulance Hall, The Car Park, Pinner Road,
N Harrow, HA2 7AT.
For further inforation please contact Toni at [email protected]
or TEXT/PHONE 07990742974.

 

WEST HOUSE DEVELOPMENT APPEAL

On 22 May an appeal for funds to help to extend West House, to allow The William Heath Robinson’s collection of Heath Robinson’s original works to be appropriately displayed, was launched at the Chris Beetles Gallery in Ryder Street, St James’s.  The cost of this is expected to be £1.5million.
Having succeeded in getting through the first stage of a bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) for £1 million, The West House & Heath Robinson Museum Trust and the William Heath Robinson Trust were jointly awarded a grant to develop their proposals to extend West House.  These will form the basis of the next stage of the bid process.
If the next stage of the bid to HLF for £1million is to be successful and the extension to West House is to go ahead, the Trusts must themselves raise matching funds of £500k.  The Trustees are therefore very grateful to Chris Beetles for helping us to launch the appeal.

Chris opened the evening with a stirring address in which he emphasised the importance of Heath Robinson in the history of illustration and his personal enthusiasm for the project and interest in William Heath Robinson.  He was followed by artist Michael Foreman who spoke about Heath Robinson as an artist, and by Nick Savage, the Head of Collections and Library at the Royal College of Arts, who spoke on the academic importance of Heath Robinson.  Martin Verden ended by explaining what the project was about and what he hoped it would to achieve.

At this stage the Trust is looking for pledges of financial support.  We hope all interested in this great artist, illustrator and cartoonist will rally to the cause.