CELEBRATIONS are taking place in Harrowbarrow and Metherell this week after the public voted to give the community's Woodland Park project £50,000 in the People's Millions TV contest on Tuesday night.

The woodland park and play area was up against The Home of Gas Lighting project in Redruth and was one of six schemes across the South West shortlisted for a share of £200,000 of Big Lottery funding.

The news that Harrowbarrow and Metherell had won the public vote was exclusively revealed to the Times as it went to press yesterday afternoon (Wednesday) and was due to be announced to the community later in the day live on ITV Westcountry.

Chairman of the playpark committee Alan Davis told the Times in a recent article: 'We are so excited about being selected for the People's Million contest and we are going all out to win the money.

'It's going to be hard because Redruth is a much bigger place than Harrowbarrow and Metherell so we need everyone in East Cornwall to vote for us.'

The £50,000 will enable the park, the only safe off-road area for children to play in the two villages, to be installed with play equipment for children from the ages of three to 15.

Some £40,000 has already been raised by the community to buy the land next to the village hall, landscape it and deal with contaminated land problems.

Local children and committee members had to present their case in a three-minute film to convince the public why they should vote for the them.

Mrs Davis said: 'At the moment there is no safe off-road area for the children to play.

'I was brought up in the village and we used to play on the old mine workings but that is taboo today. Officialdom has shut it down but not provided anywhere else for the children.

'Local people have put an awful lot of effort into making this happen — it has been ten years since we started it all off.'

He said 50 children were already playing in the park but with the new equipment there could be potentially 300 youngsters using it.