£90,000 boost for Pembroke Dock 3D project (From Western Telegraph)

£90,000 boost for Pembroke Dock 3D project

6:20pm Sunday 24th February 2013 in County News

Academics from De Montfort University in Leicester have been awarded a second round of funding to work on a project to digitally recreate Pembroke Dock.

The university’s Digital Building Heritage (DBH) team has £90,000 of funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for 11 projects, including Pembroke Dock.

In November, the Western Telegraph reported that Pembroke Dock Bicentenary Group was given a £9,900 Heritage Lottery Fund All Our Stories grant for the project.

The money will be used to identify as far as possible when, why and how each building was constructed and research the identity and stories of their occupants during the last 200 years to reveal the human story of the town.

Academics will then use this information to produce a 3D digital reconstruction of the former Royal Dockyard and models of what the earliest streets in the town looked like.

The team will be using the latest technology including 3D laser scanning and virtual reality simulation, which will be available online.

It is hoped the project will be completed in time for Pembroke Dock’s Bicentenary celebrations in 2014.

De Montford University professor Dr Douglas Cawthorne is leading the DBH team.

He said: “It’s great news that we have been awarded the second round of funding, especially the full amount.

“It promises to be hugely interesting from a research point of view, although it’s a lot of work.

“These projects are really about the heritage groups, helping the community understand their heritage, and we are happy to be able to help do that.”

Pembroke Dock Bicentenary Group chairman Councillor Pam George said: “There’s an awful lot of stories and it’s really very interesting. There are things you would never know and I have lived here all my life.”