Part of our ARCH Project is a Heritage Audit. This will help us and the wider community identify and in turn protect and promote the heritage which we are custodians of or have access of an interest in. Already as we have engaged Heritage Consultants LEXXER Solutions we have begun to appreciate just how massive a task this will be. We hope to strike the right balance between getting a good overview of all we are owners or or have an interest in as well as looking at how best to prioritise and protect as well as promote and increase access to and understanding of all the assets we have. 

The has been commissioned by Portadown Heritage Tours who will be working with a range of stakeholders and owners of the subject property, and has been kindly funded thy the National Lottery Heritage Lottery Fund. The consultants have been working away with us over the past weeks to structure the study and make it as useful a piece of work as possible. They have helped to make it more manageable and we have agreed an A…B…C… process. This will look at the Artefacts we have, the Built heritage we have an interest in and the Customs and Cultural aspects of what we have identified.

We have taken the opportunity of the Pandemic lockdown to be able to safely survey and audit our main heritage asset – the building we are based in.  The building in question is Carlton Street Orange Hall Portadown. The audit has taken the form of a condition survey and report has been prepared on the basis of a visual walk-through inspection of the premises and a desk top study and analysis of the organisation’s pictures, archives, plans, drawings and documents.

It is a preliminary report, and will identify issues of conservation concern and give independent verification of the owner’s own assessment of the condition of the building and the conservation work needed. This show how a research based piece of heritage consultancy work can look back and record the past but more importantly be of use in the future.