Case Study: Wootton Bridge, Isle of Wight

The Wootton Bridge project is striving to promote the enjoyment of Wootton’s varied heritage assets and thereby helping to build the village into a prosperous community.

A charming village on the north coast of the Isle of Wight located amidst beautiful countryside. The lovely Wootton Creek and Mill Pond forms the eastern boundary of the village, the Creek being used by yachtsmen and boaters. The Millpond is home to herons, egrets and kingfishers, with the surrounding countryside home to red squirrels.

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Need for the project

Wootton Bridge suffers from its close proximity to the main ferry ports and as such is not a natural destination for visitors. Very few visitors are aware of the depth of experiences this small village has to offer. Ironically being a gateway to the island has meant Wootton has become just that, in as much as few bother to stop and explore.

Therefore the key aims of the project are:

To increase the level of interpretation available to visitors.
Encourage visitors to stay longer in the area.
To raise visitor awareness of Wootton’s tourism offer.
To encourage local participation.

The project planned to meet these aims by developing a series of 5 walks of varying length in and around the village that can cater for those of all physical abilities. Each walk will deal with a different aspect or area of Wootton and its heritage.

Planning the Project

Shortly after its founding in 1999, the Wootton Bridge Village Partnership produced a Heritage Trail leaflet, enabling visitors to explore the area. It proved to be very popular but it was realised that with a revision required so much more could be done to enhance the visitor experience.

In the autumn of 2005, Hidden Britain started work to assist the Village Partnership in achieving the objective of revealing more of what Wootton and its surroundings had to offer thereby attracting visitors and increasing revenue into the village.

A small working group was established and comprised members with a wide variety of skills and knowledge.

The group worked to prepare a funding bid to the Local Heritage Initiative for funds to allow the project to be implemented. In January of 2006 LHI kindly agreed a grant of £9000 to the group for undertaking the project.

In order to proceed a number of other local residents freely gave of their time to the project. They provided additional information, contributed illustrative material for the leaflets and actually tested the walks by going out and treading every inch of them.

Project Outputs :

To design and produce a selection of five circular walks detailing the heritage and environment of the village.

Implementing the Project

A number of working group meetings were held at which the themes for the walks, five in all, were agreed and draft texts were compiled. These were reviewed critically and each succeeding draft eventually culminated into what was considered to be an achievable walk which would not only inform but also reveal Wootton’s stunning surroundings – and provide healthy exercise.

The leaflets themselves were professionally designed by Simone Whitehurst of Coco Design Co. Printing was carried out locally on the Island by Crossprint Limited.

A formal launch of the walks leaflets was held at the village's annual Party in the Park on Saturday 15 July 2006. With a large number of people in attendance, it proved to be an ideal opportunity to bring the project to a much wider audience and copies of the leaflets were distributed.

On the following day, Sunday, there was folk music and other entertainment appropriate to the Musical Heritage leaflet and participants were encouraged to try out the walks for themselves.

Local Benefits:

The project has provided benefits to the local heritage and environment by an increased awareness of their importance through an accessible medium that encourages people to get outside and find out more. Taking these steps may well encourage people to get more actively involved with local groups, which in turn can build cohesiveness and unity between groups in a community.

The project also aims to increase local pride and confidence to allow future projects of a similar ilk to be undertaken.

Finally the project aims to increase the economic benefit derived by local businesses from visitors to the village, by signposting to businesses and services before/during and after a walk.

“The whole project brought together people from different backgrounds and with different skills and yet by working in partnership they produced the means for others to enjoy their own very special part of the Island.”