The project aims to preserve, restore and celebrate an outstanding ‘Capability’ Brown park, which includes a rare, Brown-designed and Grade I-listed Chapel.

The project seeks to restore this outstanding landscape and enliven it with eyecatchers and activities which highlight the site’s history of innovative thinking, art, architectural change and ecological diversity. The project will:

• Restore the ‘Capability’ Brown Chapel of 1776-9 as a venue for music and events
• Build a new Visitor Welcome Centre to provide materials about the site’s landscape, history and ecology as well as much-needed visitor facilities
• Expand learning, engagement and volunteering opportunities
• Secure and develop the biodiversity of the parkland and recreate original Georgian pathways so visitors can view forest, wetland and meadow habitats while enjoying Brown’s original sightlines
• Create two visionary eyecatchers, a footbridge and a wetland boardwalk in the landscape, drawing attention to the history of the site in refreshing new ways and enabling a circular walk of the park
• Use Brown’s landscape as a platform to bring together a range of interests – art, architecture, landscape design, health and wellbeing, music, history, and ecology – which will enable engagement with new audiences in totally new ways

Dr Steven Parissien, Director of Compton Verney, said: “We’re delighted that the Heritage Lottery Fund has given us this support. Compton Verney has enriched the regional cultural landscape for the past ten years, and this grant will enable us to fully exploit and harness the astonishing potential of our historic context, thus benefiting both the local community and visitors from further afield.”

Reyahn King, Head of Heritage Lottery Fund West Midlands, said: “This project will restore the appearance and enhance our appreciation of Capability Brown’s landscape. It will also help to conserve the rich biodiversity to be found in the grounds of this magnificent mansion.”

Notes to editors

About Compton Verney

Compton Verney is an award-winning art gallery set in a Georgian mansion surrounded by 120 acres of Capability Brown landscape. It is an independent art gallery and registered charity which receives no central or local government funding but which is sustained through admissions income, memberships, sales from the shop and café, hire and sponsorship income, donations, legacies, endowment income and in-kind support.

Further information

For more information please contact Vicky Wilford, HLF Press Office, on 020 7591 6046.