A HISTORIC city cemetery is just weeks away from unveiling a community venue as a major transformation project comes to a close.

Generous Plymouth people dug deep in 2008 to raise an extraordinary £80,000 for Ford Park Cemetery's Rejuven8 appeal.

The cash unlocked £463,000 of Heritage Lottery funding to turn the site's Victorian chapel into a venue for concerts and lectures, and another chapel into a heritage centre.

Volunteers and contractors have been hard at work ever since – and hope to show off the results as early as next month.

The project is on course to finish in the second half of March, trust chairman Dr Henry Will MBE told The Herald, with only internal work and some repairs left to complete.

He said it was hoped the Grade II-listed Victorian chapel would also house a slate memorial, to be installed in May, naming all Plymouth's known civilian Blitz victims – 1,250 in total.

A public appeal was launched last week to raise the final £15,000 needed to make what will be the first memorial of its kind in any British city into a reality.

Over the last year, Dr Will said the work at Ford Park Cemetery had included:

Cleaning, raking out and re-pointing the faces of the buildings' elevations and restoring their ornamental stone pinnacles

Structural timber work and construction of a lodge for the Victorian's chapel's protected bats

Re-plastering, re-glazing windows and fitting new entrance doors

Laying ducting, insulation, underfloor heating and screeding of the floor

Slating and lead work in the roof and the replacement and conservation of stonework.

With this done, he said, efforts could now turn to the interior, such as fixing lighting, decorating the building and laying the slate floor.

Dismantling the bell turret and repairing or replacing the stonework below, Dr Will added, would mean having to rebuild the bell-housing at a later stage, subject to funding being available.

The cemetery's memorialisation project is edging closer to completion after backing from MPs, survivors of the Plymouth Blitz and a £1,000 cheque from the Friends of Ford Park Cemetery.

To donate, please send cheques made payable to 'FPCT/Memorialisation A/C' to Ford Park Cemetery, Ford Park Road, Plymouth PL4 6NT. For more information, please call 01752 665442, email trustees@ford-park-cemetery.org or visit www.ford-park-cemetery.org