OVER the past 18 months, Contains Art has been working together with organisations across Watchet and Somerset on a heritage and creative project to celebrate and commemorate Wansbrough Paper Mill.

The mill closed at the end of 2015, ending more than a 250 years of papermaking in the town, and the project has been made possible by a £26,400 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

In the months before the mill closed, artists, photographers and filmmakers began capturing images and memories, resulting in a large body of work.

A creative exhibition took place last year at Contains Art, and the Wansbrough project culminates this month with a Heritage Lottery Fund supported exhibition displayed on Watchet’s Esplanade.

The exhibition includes history, photos, images, memories and more, and provides an opportunity to celebrate the history of the mill, its importance to the town and area, its people and its legacy.

The exhibition will be displayed outdoors so that it can be viewed at any time during September.

Several events will run alongside the exhibition, including a launch event today (Friday), at which the boards will be unveiled, films shown and a new piece of music for the mill played for the first time.

Theatre Mélange, who filmed in the mill and interviewed some of those who had worked there for decades, will be staging an original production, Paper Mates - a portrait of Wansbrough Mill ,in Watchet Library today at 4.30, 5.15 and 7.15pm and tomorrow and Sunday at 10, 10.45 and 11.30am.

Saturday September 23 will see a free community event from 2 to 5pm on Watchet Esplanade with paper-making, paper craft and paper bunting fun for all the family.

The Wansbrough project has included, alongside creative and heritage exhibitions, a comprehensive photographic and measured recording of the buildings on the site with a laser drone survey and laser surveys of special hard-to-access parts of the site.

The project team, supported by dozens of volunteers, has also compiled an archive of documents found at the mill. This will be deposited at Somerset Heritage Centre in Taunton as a permanent resource for the future.

Members of the community were invited to provide their own documents relating to the mill, and these included an amazing number of photographs, press cuttings, samples and documents.

These have all been scanned and logged and will be deposited with the rest of the work from the project at the heritage centre.

In partnership with Watchet Market House Museum, the project has recorded oral histories from former mill workers, capturing their memories and stories, and a CD of these has been created alongside a listening station in the museum where you can hear extracts.