Precious landmarks like Stonehenge, maritime favourites such as ss Great Britain and Cutty Sark or those world famous heritage attractions, like our award winning national museums or the National Gallery and V&A? Perhaps we think of beautiful places such as our glorious landscapes, coastlines, parks, rivers and canals?

All of these and many more have benefited, thanks to National Lottery players, from large amounts of investment from HLF in major projects over £5m. 100 of these have been closely looked at to help us uncover what has worked best, what the wider benefits can be and how the projects are doing now.

So what makes a great major heritage project? What is the wider impact of that funding?

HLF’s CEO, Carole Souter, said: “In total, over £1.6bn of HLF money has been invested in truly life-changing major projects. We’ve seen the transformation of the Mary Rose Museum, the creation of a new building at Imperial War Museum Duxford and the reinvention of other great heritage favourites such as Stonehenge, ss Great Britain and Bletchley Park. What makes these projects stand out is a strong vision, robust leadership and an ability to successfully navigate organisational change.”

Key facts

• 7 of the 10 most popular visitor attractions in England had received a Major Grant: the British Museum; National Gallery; Southbank Centre; Natural History Museum; Science Museum; the V&A and Somerset House.

• 94m visits are made each year to visitor attractions that received these Major Grants – up by 53m since before the projects happened – which is a 130% rise. The biggest increases in visits were from families and young people.

• benefits of these major projects included better governance and team work, greater public engagement, improved customer care and increased income.

Carole Souter continued: “The sector can build on these success stories and take advantage of the lessons learnt.”

Take a look at some amazing pictures of our Major Grants projects in the HLF Flickr gallery.