Donate to North Essex Heritage

A young girl wearing a high visibility jacket is seen inside a brick-built room. She pointing to a brick. A woman stands with her.

Bringing Jumbo back to life is a huge project – we expect it to cost around £7m. We hope to get most of this from grants, including a major grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, and Colchester City Council. North Essex Heritage, which has several projects underway, have set a local fundraising target of £2m by mid 2025.

Please support Jumbo

Jumbo’s heritage significance and conservation status means restoring it will be expensive and there is no guarantee we will secure the required funding and donations.

Dealing with the repair of the innovative, Victorian engineering while allowing the building to be brought back to sustainable use which will pay for its upkeep, is a major challenge and no single grant will suffice. Trustees are therefore gathering a cocktail of funding from a variety of sources. Jumbo has been adopted as a £1.1m Towns Fund project and this has helped pay for a design team and project managers to develop our plans and ensure they are successful.

Please note our current funds and any donations received are not set aside for specific projects and may be used for any of the Trust’s work. Donations made to North Essex Heritage may not be used for The Jumbo Project and could be spent on other heritage projects in the area.

If you would like to discuss donating a larger amount, or are interested in supporting the project in another way, please do contact us directly: