Craven Arms bowls club in cash bid for £250,000 clubhouse

Bowls players hoping to build a new £250,000 club house in a Shropshire town are turning to a county-wide fund in the hope of providing a facility which could benefit other groups.

Officials at Craven Arms Bowls Club have announced their intention to apply for a share of a £500,000 pot of cash for small towns across Shropshire as part of the Market Towns Revitalisation Programme.

The building would also act as a social club for the town.

They have already received £20,000 from Shropshire Council's Community Buildings Fund and need another £25,000 from the revitalisation programme. The rest would be sourced from nationwide lottery grant schemes.

Craven Arms is one of 11 small towns in the county which has been asked to submit bids for projects which need cash for capital works.

A drop-in session will be at the town's methodist church hall on Tuesday, from 3.30pm until 7.30pm, for people to learn more about the Market Towns Revitalisation Programme.

Phil Baker, club treasurer and first team captain, said club members had raised about £7,000 in fundraising throughout 2010 to help pay for architects' fees and to get the project off the ground.

He said: "The whole project is probably going to cost nearly £250,000. We have decided to apply for MTRP funding and we have initial applications to send off to Veolia which could net us £40,000 and the Big Lottery Fund's Reaching Communities scheme, which we will probably ask for about £200,000.

"We hope to use the new club house to upgrade our facilities but also to act as a social club open all year round. The town's social club closed in 2006 and at the moment if people want to play snooker or skittles they have to go to Ludlow or Church Stretton."