POSTBRIDGE Visitor Centre is about to embark on a new chapter in its history as it undergoes a £500,000 extension.

Dartmoor National Park Authority is taking the next steps in its ambitious vision to transform the centre and tell the story of Dartmoor’s Bronze Age in greater detail.

The centre will close its doors from Monday, September 23 for preparation work and construction will start on October 21 which will last 32 weeks.

Dartmoor is an important area for Bronze Age archaeology in Western Europe with iconic sites such as the prehistoric settlement of Grimspound and the double stone rows at Merrivale.

The large, single-storey extension at Postbridge will create a new accessible exhibition space with interactive displays celebrating the internationally significant archaeological finds at Whitehorse Hill — the location of a Dartmoor Bronze Age grave excavated in 2011.

This is the next step in a long-term project to reimagine and improve the offer at Postbridge, led by Dartmoor National Park Authority and has been made possible by the National Lottery Heritage Fund-supported Moor than meets the eye [MTMTE] Landscape Partnership Scheme.

The National Park Authority also successfully secured £500,000 in funding from the Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE) to fund the building works, enhancing the work already undertaken through the MTMTE partnership.

A meeting of the Dartmoor National Park Authority last Friday (September 6) saw the committee note the funding approval received from the RDPE and approve the instruction to notify the preferred bidder of the intention to proceed to the construction phase.

Pamela Woods, chair of Dartmoor National Park Authority, said: ‘These are very exciting times for Dartmoor. The transformation from start to finish is a complex project but one that will be handled as sensitively as possible.

‘The redevelopment of Postbridge will give us a wonderful opportunity to tell Dartmoor’s story in greater detail, offering visitors a fascinating insight into the people who once lived in this wild and special place. We hope it will encourage people to stay in the area for longer, something that will benefit the local economy too.’

The plans for the extended centre are now on display.

Members of the public are invited to see them and look at some of the new interactive interpretation already in place at the centre, before it closes.

The authority said that efforts would be made so that disruption would be kept to a minimum. Part of the car park and the toilets would remain open during this period.

• The remains of the Bronze Age burial on Whitehorse Hill — on moorland between Lydford and Chagford — captured national attention as what was discovered was an extraordinary and internationally important collection of Bronze Age grave goods, providing a rare glimpse into those who lived on Dartmoor nearly 4,000 years ago.

The burial, a scheduled monument at risk, was set within an eroding island of peat and was first discovered more than ten years previous.

Attempts to prevent its further deterioration failed because of its exposed location and the rescue excavation in 2011 was crucial to help record the important fabric and content of the monument.

As the grave had been partially exposed to the elements for over a decade expectations were not high ­— but what was found inside rewrote the history of the Bronze Age Moor.

The remains placed there between 1730BC and 1600BC had been wrapped in the skin of a brown bear and fastened with a copper alloy pin.

Grave goods included more than 200 beads probably from a necklace, wooden studs which may have been worn in the lip or ear, and a bracelet of woven cow hair, a flint tool and fragments of textile and leather.

The discovery of the items was unusual for Dartmoor where many cists had already been explored before the arrival of modern archaeology techniques.