The future is still bright for a scheme to revive a historic Westcountry chapel despite the project narrowly missing out on a £2 million grant in a live television programme.

Organisers behind the campaign to restore Newlyn Trinity Methodist Chapel, in the West Cornwall fishing village, have vowed to continue their efforts.

The Rev Julyan Drew, minister of the chapel, admitted he and other campaigners were disappointed not to have won the top prize in the final of BBC's Restoration Village on Sunday night. Despite being in the top five in the public vote on the programme at one stage, they were beaten by another project.

Mr Drew said going to the final had been a huge boost for their efforts, not least because they are set to get £50,000 for being the regional winners.

He said: "We are already talking about the next stage from here and the plan is to use our prize money to help us put together detailed proposals.

"From there we will look at all possible avenues of funding available to us and use these proposals as the basis for bids for grants or donations."

The fact that the project was featured on a hugely popular television programme has given the project a solid platform to work from.

"The amount of publicity and support we have generated is overwhelming and we have already been given donations even though we haven't officially started fundraising yet," Mr Drew said.

"We think we have got something very exciting to do with this building and we think we can use the platform we now have to go on and achieve it."

The aim of the project is to salvage the 170-year-old chapel after surveyors declared its ceiling unsafe. About £1 million is needed to rectify all the problems and make it "windproof, waterproof and worm-proof".

Restored to its former glory, it would then be used as a community space and to tell the story of Newlyn and some of its more famous residents.

Article copyright WESTERN MORNING NEWS 

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