Cash restoration after TV blow

The Vaynol hall needs about £2.8m of restoration work

A north Wales estate which missed out on money from the BBC's Restoration programme has won a compensation prize.

Vaynol, near Bangor, which has more than 60 listed buildings, has been awarded a £1.25m European grant to teach restoration through traditional crafts such as masonry and joinery.

The money could help after the disappointment of a failed bid to win £3.4m to refurbish a 16th Century hall on the estate in the BBC series, which ended on Sunday.

However, £2.8m has now been allocated for the teaching project, some of it Objective One cash from the European Uniont.

Students at the Vaynol Building Conservation School will use their skills to restore some of the listed buildings on the 1,000-acre site.

The £3m prize was won by Manchester's Victoria Baths

Sean Wood, managing director of Y Faenol Cyf, the company set up to run the estate, said: "This is a project which has started from nothing.

"The staff here have worked extremely hard to put together a bid of high enough quality to get this money."

"It really has been a team effort."

A trial of the project involving 120 students has been completed.

Pupils have studied stone masonry, wood joinery, furniture making, painting and decorating.

Valuable skills

During their training the students have renovated 19 rooms and brought to life nine gardens within the estate.

The grant will be used to fund the tutors and materials over a three year period at the centre.

The school is looking to enrol 300 students for the next phase of the scheme.

Mr Wood said the courses had retrained people with valuable skills.

"We've got people who haven't worked for 15 years who have been retrained and have gone to full-time employment," he said.

The bid to refurbish the old hall was featured in the 10-part BBC's Restoration series.

The project was knocked out of the competition when viewers were asked to choose between Vaynol Old Hall, Llanelly House in Llanelli, Amlwch Port and Parys Mountain in Anglesey.

The over all winner of the programme was the Grade II listed Victoria Baths, Manchester, which received 282,018 votes.