Kimmeridge fossil museum given £2.7m Heritage Lottery Fund boost

The new museum and community facility will be built on the site of Kimmeridge's ageing village hall

Plans to create a fossil museum on Dorset's Jurassic Coast have received £2.7m of funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).

The museum, to be built on the site of Kimmeridge village hall, will be home to more than 2,000 fossils collected over 30 years by resident Steve Etches.

It will also house a community space and conservation workshop, where people can see work in progress.

The museum, which is due to open in 2016, already has planning permission.

Nerys Watts, head of HLF South West, said: "The Etches Collection is truly extraordinary and gives us a comprehensive history of fossil collecting on Dorset's Jurassic Coast."

In August, Purbeck District Council said it was pledging £50,000 to the project.

The Kimmeridge Trust, which is leading the project, said the new hall and museum would create eight new jobs.

The Etches Collection is the largest collection of Kimmeridge clay fossils outside of the Natural History Museum in London and contains some which were previously unknown to science.