Cathedrals given £150,000 grant

Cathedrals in Cambridgeshire and Norfolk are to benefit from more than £150,000 in grants from English Heritage and the Wolfson Foundation.

The cathedrals include Peterborough and Ely Cathedrals and the St John's Roman Catholic Cathedral in Norwich.

Ely Cathedral has been awarded £43,000 towards a fire detection system and Peterborough Cathedral receives £39,000 to help with repairs to its West Front.

The Roman Catholic Cathedral in Norwich gets £72,000 towards roof re-leading.

St John's is the second largest Catholic cathedral in the UK.

The Reverend James Walsh, Dean of the Cathedral, said: "This timely grant enables us to complete the final stage of a three-part programme of re-leading the roof of our cathedral.

"Without it the work could not be done."

The grants scheme was launched in 1991 when a survey revealed that cathedrals were facing a huge backlog of major repairs that they could not fund alone.

This is the final year of the current joint grant scheme with the Wolfson Foundation, but English Heritage will continue to fund priority repairs to cathedrals in need through its regional grants scheme.