Protecting natural heritage

National Lottery funding helped the Giant’s Causeway, Northern Ireland’s only World Heritage Site, attract more people and improve the management of this incredible landscape. A £3m National Lottery grant helped build a new visitor centre, designed to complement and blend into its world-famous setting. It also created new jobs for the local community, and opened up volunteering posts such as storytellers and welcome hosts.

National Lottery projects have also supported some of Northern Ireland’s eight Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The Glens of Antrim received funding to improve the way conservation is managed, and help local people get involved with the natural heritage on their doorstep. 

Celebrating Belfast’s shipbuilding past

Belfast is renowned for its maritime and shipbuilding history, and the regeneration of the Titanic Quarter is a celebration of this legacy. Projects like the restoration of the SS Nomadic are placing heritage at the heart of this, ensuring that icons of Belfast’s past are protected and will be enjoyed by people from all over the world for years to come.

Watch out also for the Titanic Hotel’s opening later this year. This new development will see the old working with the new, as the famous Harland and Wolff Drawing Offices become part of a luxury new hotel for Belfast. 

Preserving the past, securing the future

The restoration and transformation of the Northern Counties Club building in Derry-Londonderry shows how heritage can be used to look to the future. National Lottery funding helped take an iconic building that had fallen into disrepair and give it a new lease of life.

Now the fully functioning Bishop’s Gate Hotel is bringing jobs and prosperity to the city and people of Derry-Londonderry. It will also play host to the HLF Chief Executive, Ros Kerslake, when she visits the city later this week.