Heritage Construction Skills

Our two Heritage Skills apprentices, Tom and Brandon, with their awards from Norfolk Constructing Excellence Club.

Water Mills and Marshes provided skills training to 250 students at City College, Norwich (CCN) and employed two heritage construction skills apprentices to help keep traditional building skills alive in Norfolk and Suffolk.

To learn these skills, students and apprentices alike were trained by carrying out essential repairs and improvements to iconic drainage mills in the Broads National Park that were in desperate need of restoring. Training was provided by a CCN tutor on site and in a workshop at the college and led to the establishment of the Heritage Skills Centre of Excellence at CCN, allowing all weather learning and practice sessions.

Mills restored as part of this project include North Mill, Six Mile House Mill, High’s Mill, Mutton’s Mill and Strumpshaw Steam Engine Pump House, all heritage structures identified to be ‘at risk’ and to be restored through the ‘Land of the Windmills’ project.

Our Heritage Construction Skills apprentices

Our two Heritage Skills apprentices, Tom and Brandon, worked tirelessly to give these mills some much needed love and care. Tom specialising in heritage carpentry and Brandon completing his apprenticeship in heritage brickwork.

Our Heritage Carpenter, Tom, won the CCN Construction Apprentice of the Year in 2022, with his work to restore our iconic Windpumps deservingly recognised. Photo taken by James Bass

Awards

In 2019, the hard work over the course of the project was recognised by the Norfolk Constructing Excellence Club with a First Place win in the category of Preservation and Rejuvenation and a Second Place finish in Norfolk over-all. The apprentices’ work was then further recognised by winning the Conservation and Regeneration category in the East of England.

In 2022, Our Heritage Carpenter, Tom, won the CCN Construction Apprentice of the Year, with his work to restore our iconic Windpumps deservingly recognised.

In 2023, the project also won two awards, one for Conservation and one for Sustainability at the Norwich and Norfolk Design & Craftsmanship Awards, held at Norwich Assembly House.