£5m scheme to revamp country park

Part of the explosives factory will become a heritage centre

A park in Essex is to be transformed into a centre for education, heritage and nature conservation.

More than £5m is to be spent on the 125 acre Wat Tyler Country Park at Pitsea, near Basildon.

At the heart of the scheme are plans to restore part of a former explosives factory into a £2.7m heritage centre powered by renewable energy.

There will also be new footpaths across a former landfill site that lies between the park and a bird reserve.

Blast barriers

Funding for the project comes from Basildon District Council, the East of England Development Agency, the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Veolia ES Cleanaway Pitsea Marshes Trust.

The park, situated on the Thames Estuary Marshes, was once part of the Pitsea Hall Estate and was farmed until the land was bought by the British Explosives Syndicate in 1895.

It was taken over by the Nobel Explosives Company in 1920 and, although few of the original buildings remain, the protective blast barriers in the form of large excavations or banks of earth can be found throughout the park.

In 1928 the land was bought by the War Department and has been used for various industrial purposes until Basildon District Council developed it as a country park in the early 1980s.