A COMMUNITY effort to recreate a historic weather station at a Darwen park is underway.

The Friends of Bold Venture park are in the process of putting together an application for a Heritage Lottery Grant to recreate the original station which was built over a century ago.

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The Victorian timber structure was knocked down and replaced with a brick building which has suffered heavily from vandalism over the past few years leaving it unsafe.

It comes as part of a plan to restore all the historic elements of the park.

Cllr Dave Smith, a member of the group, said it would still have to come down but the hope was it could be replaced with a replica.

He said: “Members of the friends group are looking at putting together a lottery grant bid to try and recreate the original structure.

“But there is a lot to go through at the moment, we need to get a lot of backing from the community, we need to work out exactly how much money we need and we need to make sure the structure is going to fully reflect the original.

“So far we have support from Darwen Vale High School so we are getting there. It would be excellent to get the weather station back again because it looks dreadful as it is.” It is expected that it will cost within the tens of thousands to recreate the original structure.

A structural engineer carried out a report on the current station which stated that parts of it had severely deteriorated.

The report considered the building ‘structurally unsafe’ and in danger of collapse, recommending that it be demolished and replaced with a new building.

The current brickwork station was decommissioned during the 1970s.

Work was due to start on the site this month but Cllr Smith said the bid had turned out to be a long process.

He said: “It’s a long term ambition of hours to get this done, it’s just going to take a while because the process is complicated.”

Year seven pupils at Darwen Vale are due to get involved with the project with head of geography Clare Eccleston co-ordinating the children. Once a formal application has been submitted to Heritage Lottery it will take eight weeks for a reply and consideration.