A £100,000 grant from the Dorset-based Chalk & Cheese rural re-generation fund to the Purbeck Mineral and Mining Museum Group (PMMMG) means the first phase of its planned ball clay mining museum is on target to open to the public during the summer of 2011.

Volunteers from the PMMMG have been working on the project near Corfe Castle since 2003 and have matched the £100,000 Chalk & Cheese grant with around £50,000 funding of their own.

PMMMG chair Peter Sills said: "We're delighted that all the work put in over the last seven years by a small but very dedicated and determined team of volunteers has been at last recognised. The grant will fast track the public opening of the museum, which we hope to have fully operational during 2012.

"It will also enable us to complete the mine tunnel and sections of the narrow gauge industrial railway over the next 18 months which will extend for up to a mile when ultimately completed."

Chalk & Cheese Director of Programme, Sarah Watson said: "We're delighted to make this funding award to the very worthwhile Purbeck Mineral and Mining Museum during such a critical time in the project's development. This is the first grant we have awarded in the Isle of Purbeck."

The Purbeck Mineral and Mining Museum is centred on a transhipment building from a former ball clay drift mine in the area. This has been dismantled and re-erected on a site adjacent to the Norden Park and Ride station on the Swanage Railway.

Chalk & Cheese is part of the Local Action for Rural Communities Funding Programme supported by the South West Regional Development Agency through the European Union's LEADER Programme. Dorset County Council acts as its accountable body.

Image: Purbeck Mineral and Mining Museum Group