HEATON Park will get a much needed multi-million pound spruce-up after hitting the lottery jackpot.

Bosses of the Prestwich park are celebrating after landing a £4.4 million hand-out from the Heritage Lottery Fund, which will be topped up to £5.9 million by Manchester City Council.

The windfall will be pumped into the heart of the historic park - the largest of its kind in Europe - to restore it to its former splendour.

Visitor facilities such as the lakeside cafe will be restored and improvements made to car parking, the stables, farm centre, Smithy Lodge and other listed buildings.

Landscaping will also take place, including site and tree clearance, re-seeding and planting.

The 18th Centruty Heaton Hall is subject to a separate lottery bid.

The good news follows a £3.4 million grant in 1996 towards the £4.5 million cost of restoring the boundary wall security, Georgian Temple and Heaton Park Orangery. As part of this, work will start shortly to install CCTV. Thousands of visitors are expected to descend on the park when it hosts the lawn green bowling competition in the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games - the year also marks the centenary of the park being purchased by the city council.

A five-year plan has been devised to inject £30 million into the park. Miss Theresa Grant, park general manager, said: "I am absolutely ecstatic. The grant means a lot. We can start to show the public some benefit after all the years of promising them improvements.

"The first stage was work to the infrastructure that people really couldn't see, but this time they can.

"It will mean that people using the park will have better facilities and hopefully a much more beautiful landscape as we are restoring the park to the glory of the early 1900s.

She added: "I would like to think that most of this phase would be completed in time for 2002."

Park bosses will now have to draw up a detailed plan of works before unlocking the latest round of Lottery cash.

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