New heritage centre opens at Port Sunlight River Park

The grand opening of a new heritage centre at Port Sunlight River Park took place on World Autism Awareness Day, which will include a café and educational centre for families to enjoy.

Wirral Civic Mayor, Geoffrey Watt, cut the blue ribbon in front of a hundred guests and visitors on Wednesday 2nd April to celebrate the fantastic work carried out on the park by the Land Trust and Autism Together, who manage the site on the Land Trust’s behalf.
Building work on the site’s heritage centre began in September 2018 and was overseen by Building Projects UK. The new centre forms part of the National Lottery Heritage Fund supported project, Discovering Bromborough 3.

During the event, families enjoyed nature trails and seed planting, whilst a display of the artefacts from previous years’ excavations was shown by project partner Big Heritage.
Celebrity VIP’s were also in attendance of the fantastic event, with super-middleweight champion boxer, Callum Smith, showing his support.

Euan Hall, Managing Director of the Land Trust said of the event:

“We were delighted to be able to officially open this fantastic facility to park users and the event was a wonderful celebration of a lot of hard work and dedication from some fantastic organisations to make it happen.

“Since the Land Trust took ownership of the site in 2014, it has been transformed into a wonderful community asset that delivers a whole host of environmental, economic and social benefits. The heritage centre will be an excellent base for educational activities and we will be working with local schools to bring children to come and learn about the environment and appreciate the benefits that spending time in green space can bring.

“Our partnership with Autism Together has been key to the site’s transformation and the heritage centre is the next step in this successful partnership as we continue to develop what we offer at Port Sunlight.”

Robin Bush, CEO of Autism Together, said:

“We have been very proud of our partnership with the Land Trust over the last 5 years and the work we have done at the Port Sunlight River Park to ensure that it is a valuable community resource. Our new Heritage Centre will further enhance the facilities that we are able to offer on the site and we are delighted that there will now be a permanent base from which we can run our activities”.

Port Sunlight River Park is a former landfill site that was transformed and opened as a public open space by the Land Trust in 2014. Since its opening it has developed into a popular tourist attraction which adds significant community benefit to the local area.