Last updated at 21:20, Thursday, 09 August 2012

Cockermouth's Main Street has been nominated for a national heritage award.

The restoration of the street following the 2009 floods has been nominated in the English Heritage Angel Awards, which were launched last year by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

The awards recognise volunteers who have worked on threatened buildings, monuments and other heritage sites.

It has been shortlisted in a category that recognises the best rescue of a heritage site and will go up against the Regal Cinema in Worcestershire, Stow Maries World War I airfield in Essex and the Salcombe Cannon site and Moor Sands wreck sites on the south Devon coast.

It is the fourth major award nomination for the Main Street scheme.

Darren Ward, architectural advisor for Cockermouth Civic Trust and chairman of the town’s shopfront regeneration scheme, said: “It is recognition for what the team has achieved.

“Hopefully other local authorities can learn from what we have achieved by turning a disaster into a golden opportunity.”

The awards judges include Lloyd Webber, broadcaster Melvyn Bragg and English Heritage’s Simon Thurley.

The winners will be announced at a ceremony in London on October 22.

First published at 19:19, Thursday, 09 August 2012
Published by http://www.timesandstar.co.uk