Battle of Hatfield Investigation Society

Hello,

Firstly, sorry for the lack of posts recently but they have been supplanted by the need to fill in funding forms.

As you know, our 1st Heritage Lottery Fund ("HLF") bid was submitted last August and declined in October.

After much feverish activity our 2nd HLF (bigger) bid was submitted yesterday evening via the "Our Heritage" scheme, just in time for the 22nd April deadline (yes.. that's today !). Only 6,000 words are allowed (we came in at 5,998 - quite honestly !)  and this took the usual hundred hours or so to complete.

We've given this our very best shot as we've submitted a project to do an umbrella of 6 subjects about the local villages of Cuckney, Norton and Holbeck  plus the Welbeck Estate of which trying to solve the mystery of the Battle of Hatfield is just the final one (item 6).  For example, we have incorporated bringing an exciting photo collection (representing c. 1880 to 1940) to wider attention and will also investigate the origins of Cuckney Castle (which is part of Cuckney Church graveyard).

We'll also keep up a parallel search for funding as we don't want to be left depressed and with nowhere to go if we are refused. So, we've applied for a £500 grant from the RoLo Lottery and shouild know by the end of April if this has been secured. If yes, then we have the form to fill in for the BIG Warsop grant which has a lot higher ceiling (it's quite flexible I believe).

However, we must re-emphasise that a lot of thinking went into this bid and it is radically different from our 1 subject only approach last August that was too skewed towards Professional Fees. This is much more of a Community focussed bid and 159 local people have signed up to get involved, including about 70 children from 2 local schools.

We should know by mid June whether we have secured HLF funding and if we have, intend to start soon after, with the Battle of Hatfield GPR and Magnetometry due to take place last and pencilled in for October.

We really believe that 2015 MUST be the year that we start our activities. After all, we have all the permissions we require to start item 6 today and also invasive permission from the Welbeck Estates Company for non church grounds activities in Phase 2 (Invasive Church and surrounding land).

Since we're up to about 3,500 FREE hours of effort so far in the project then I think that's it's time that this much more than solid ground work was rewarded (and soon).

We've laid the foundations so let's build the house !

Let's hope our application is as persuasive.

Thanks,

Paul