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Presenters Kevin McCloud\u00a0and Anna Keay\u00a0showcase the most incredible restorations of historic buildings from around the UK. From palaces to watermills, department stores to music halls, they unfold nine centuries of history told through treasured places that have been brought back from the brink. These are bold interventions demanding great craft skills, enormous dedication and budgets that run into millions.<\/p>\n
This second episode, on Thursday 30th<\/sup> March, explores several wonderful buildings of the nineteenth century, in the Victorian category of the competition.\u00a0 Anna Keay and her team spent a week filming at Portico and at Northern Ireland\u2019s two other entries: Mount Stewart and Sion Mills stables in Co Tyrone.\u00a0 Portico is a grade A listed Greek Revival temple and widely held to be one of the best examples of its type in Great Britain and Ireland.\u00a0 The restoration included everything from the ridge tiles to the subfloors and the result is a stunning landmark in Portaferry and a great credit to the foresight of those people who built the church in the mid 19th<\/sup> century as well as to those who recently restored it.<\/p>\n Prtico\u2019s restoration was driven by the Friends of Portaferry Presbyterian Church (FPPC) who raised the \u00a31.5m necessary for that project.\u00a0 The primary funder was the Heritage Lottery Fund but 24 other charities made significant contributions and a very successful crowd funding campaign raised over \u00a370,000.\u00a0 Last May HRH The Prince of Wales reopened the building which is now an arts and heritage centre.\u00a0 In the last 10 months Portico has held over 65 events.\u00a0 Later this year from 26th<\/sup> \u2013 29th<\/sup> May they will host their annual four day music festival \u201cFestiv\u2019Ards\u201d featuring superb classical music ranging from organ concerts through clarinet, string quartet, piano, vocal and cello recitals (further information at www.porticoards.com<\/a>).<\/p>\n Ian McDonnell, chair of FPPC Portico\u2019s restoration said \u201cPortico has already won several prizes and many accolades and is a wonderful example and lead for those who own a listed building and aren\u2019t quite sure how to rescue it. \u00a0To have the work that we\u2019ve done recognized in this way on national television is a great compliment to the many people involved in the project, in particular Bill Maxwell our conservation architect\u201d.<\/p>\n At the end of the episode Kevin and Anna hear which building the Judges from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors have shortlisted to be in the running for the ultimate accolade of \u2018Restoration of the Year\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Thursday night at 8pm Portico\u2019s restoration will feature amongst that of seven other properties on Channel 4\u2019s \u201cGreat British Buildings: Restoration of the Year\u201d programme. Presenters Kevin McCloud\u00a0and Anna Keay\u00a0showcase the most incredible restorations of historic buildings from around the UK. From palaces to watermills, department stores to music halls, they unfold nine centuries … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13731"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13731"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13734,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13731\/revisions\/13734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}