AN application for hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of funding is due to be submitted by Calstock Parish Council to convert the disused Albaston Cemetery Chapel into a new base for the parish archive.

The parish council is applying to the Heritage Lottery Fund for £400,000 to make the necessary renovations to the old chapel so that it can be used as a new, larger base for the Calstock Archive.

The parish archive was created in 1985 and was moved to the Tamar Valley Centre in Drakewalls in 2009.

The Calstock Parish Archive Trust was set up to provide a facility to collect, store and catalogue documents and photographs and preserve them for the benefit of people wishing to study their local history.

The archive has been run entirely by volunteers for a number of years, with the aid of minimal grants from local bodies. Over the past year the archive has been working with the Cornwall Record Office towards a full accreditation as a local record centre.

As the archive continues to expand, it has outgrown its current premises and if the Heritage Lottery grant is successful, it is hoped the archive will be able to move into the old cemetery chapel, which would enable it to enlarge its facilities and provide a better environment for visitors and volunteers.

Kate Threlfall, a Calstock Parish Archive trustee, said: ‘We currently have one very overcrowded room in the Tamar Valley Centre which is bursting. We don’t have enough room to store all our information, there aren’t enough work stations for the 20 volunteers and it isn’t the best place for visitors.

‘We get visitors from all over the world wanting to come and research their families from the area and at the moment there is nowhere for them to sit unless the centre isn’t being used for anything else. It’s not very user friendly so it would be a great help if we could get into the cemetery chapel.’

Kate said if they got the go ahead the new facility would be state-of-the-art with new equipment, better facilities for the volunteers, a proper kitchen and proper disabled facilities.

‘It is quite a big space and would be divided partly for safe storage and computer equipment and the other part as an area for the public,’ she said. ‘We would have space for school groups and visiting groups and would be able to expand the archive more and do more outreach work.’

The archive group and the parish council have been working on the Heritage Lottery application since the beginning of the year and hope to be able to submit it towards the end of next week. They have been told they should know fairly quickly if they have got through the stage one process.

Stage two of the application would include more detail such as architect plans, specific equipment needed, plans for the future and how it would benefit the area.

Kate added: ‘We look forward to hearing whether we have got through stage one. We’re hoping to get the green light — it will make a massive difference.’