'Sponsor a brick' to turn railway shed into hub

A "sponsor a brick" scheme to help buy and turn a former Victorian railway goods shed into a community hub has been started by a group of residents.

They hope to transform the privately owned shed, which used to sit beside the Cambridge to Spalding railway line but nowadays marks the entrance point to Ring's End nature reserve in the Cambridgeshire Fens.

Hayley Dolbear, a director of "The Goods Shed @20FT" group - named after the nearby road Twenty Foot Bank - said symbolic bricks could be purchased for £5, with 50 bought by people so far.

She hoped the shed, which was de-commissioned in 1982, would become a cafe and education centre, with allotments also put on the land.

Dolbear said March had been known as a "really significant railway town", once having "the second biggest marshalling yard in Europe, where incoming freight trains were uncoupled and sorted with 42 separate sidings".

She said it was important to keep the former shed intact to save it from being torn down.

"It is part of our heritage and a huge part of our history," she said.

Dolbear was inspired by a new government initiative that encourages former workplace buildings to be preserved for local communities, which led to her setting up a community interest company to oversee the project.

She said she had discussed the plans with the current owner and hoped they could sell the shed at a "very competitive price", with restoration work estimated to cost about £650,000.

She added that grant applications to fund the work would be more accessible to the group once it had bought the site, but said if the purchase failed then money from the "sponsor a brick" scheme would be used for "an alternative community benefit".

Dolbear said after exploring the inside of the goods shed, it still held a few mysterious features.

"We discovered what looks like a cage, which we found out was to store ammunition - but through research, also bootleg whiskey may have been kept there," she added.

Do you have a story suggestion for Cambridgeshire? Contact us below.

Follow Cambridgeshire news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.