AN ambitious scheme to make 205-year-old Lydney Docks a top port of call for leisure users has been boosted by planning permission for a new visitor centre and cafe.

Although the last ship may have sailed 40

years ago, Lydney’s Coastal Community Team (LCCT) have embarked on a £2.1m bid to transform the fortunes of the historic harbour.

And having reinstated the century-old harbour swing bridge in a £50,000 project last year, the next stage includes the development of an old building with a grim secret.

The small block beside the main harbour basin will be converted into toilets, to serve a new timber-built café, outdoor seating area and interactive heritage information point.

But few will know that the building used to house coffins, ready to receive drowned bodies plucked from the Severn Estuary.

Indeed, after the docks closed as a working harbour in the late 1970s, children used to dare each other to go inside “the mortuary” and try one out for size!

Forest planners have approved the next stage of the Lydney Docks and Harbour £2.1m Eyes Right regeneration scheme, which will also see the “store room” beside the mortuary house an information centre, alongside a pop-up timber café and outdoor seating area.

Comprising the likes of the Forest of Dean Council, Lydney Town Council, dock owners the Environment Ag­ency, community groups and local businesses, the government-backed LCCT is a multi-agency group charged with reinvigorating the 17-hectare site, along with the canal and derelict Pine End works industrial site.

Built to export coal and iron and opening in 1813, the harbour is classified as a Scheduled Ancient Monument and is on English Heritage’s ‘at risk’ register.

But all that is set to change if exciting plans come to fruition, including the dredging of the outer basin and canal, freeing the outer harbour gates to allow more boat use, mooring and leisure activities; a new footpath link from the train station; landscaping, tree and bulb planting; interactive signboards and information displays; fish-

ing platforms; observation points; and a cycle and pedestrian track on the west of the dock.

The Severn and Wye Smokery, a worldwide exporter and LCCT stakeholder, has also bought the Pine End Works in the hope of creating a speciality food and drink plant and visitor attraction as part of a £20m project. New events and activities to draw people to the harbour are also in the pipeline, plus bespoke industrial artworks and improved car parking.

Lydney town councillor Brian Pearman said: “This is another step towards achieving the vision for the harbour set out in the Lydney Neighbourhood Plan, and follows the successful refurbishment of the canal swing bridge.”

The Forest Council’s Cabinet member for development, Cllr Rich-

ard Leppington (UKIP, Bream), added: “I hope that as this project progresses we will see additional investment in the Lydney harbour area, so that its potential for tourism and recreation can be opened up further.”

To view the plans visit the ‘planning applications’ section of the council’s website www.

fdean.gov.uk and type reference P1648/17/FUL in the search field.