We were excited to hear last week that we have been successful in securing funding from NPT Council’s Shared Prosperity Fund for creating a sustainable drainage system and landscaping across the yard at the back of Hwb y Gors. This will take place this year once we’ve put together a schedule of works. And inside, our builders have been hard at work during 2023. Although the renovation has taken a lot longer than we had hoped, we feel it will be worth the wait. Here’s a few pictures of the building inside. With our new sprung floor and gallery in the hall, and our Changing Places room with hoist and adult changing bed, we’re really excited at how the building is taking shape. We’ve done our best to preserve and recreate some of beautiful features of the building like the internal windows, fireplaces, hall beams and curved plasterwork as well as the amazing entrance stone work. We feel so strongly that the 110 years of school memories live on in the building.

The next steps are: to fit out the cafe, lay the flooring throughout and landsape the yard with the sustainable drainage system (SUDs). Sustainable drainage aims to retain water on site for as long as possible rather than putting it all down the main drains which causes flooding & other problems further down the valley. The system will also take rainwater from the roof and divert it to water the garden and flush the toilets.

Once all this is done, we’ll be ready to finally open the doors to Hwb y Gors!  In case you missed it, here’s a short video made by Mike Harrison about what’s happening at Hwb y Gors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zr95N5yCYQ