Rare tannery takes our pounds 30,000 award

A PLAN to preserve a rare and ancient family tannery in Cornwall has won the pounds 30,000 award in the 'Free With The Independent. You' competition.

Readers were invited to submit a 150-word statement on how they would use a cash award to change their lives - by fulfilling a dream, perhaps, or liberating themselves to take on a new job or complete a long-nurtured project.

The winner was Jonathon Croggon, a 28-year-old marketing manager who wants to return with his brother to the small village of Grampound, in Cornwall, to run the business that has been in his family for 300 years - one of only two in Britain still using natural oak-bark tanning methods, selling high-quality leather to top-of-the-range shoemakers.

His winning entry: 'The tanning industry in Grampound dates back to the earliest records of Cornish industrial history, using as materials the abundant supplies of oak coppice along the river banks and raw hides produced locally.

'The tanning process involved 'liming' the hides to loosen the fur, before 'tanning' the leather in a solution of oak bark, a process that takes more than a year.

'J Croggon and Son is the only remaining tanner in Grampound. Margins are tight, and the recession has had a devastating effect on the leather markets. If this company fails, another of Britain's oldest crafts would take a step into history.

'Bankers are reluctant to extend loans to such a company. I would spend your prize money refurbishing and improving the capital stock, and relocating my brother and me so we can continue to manage the tannery into the next century. This would be a dream come true]'

Out of nearly 5,000 entries the judges drew up a shortlist of 50 from which to select 21 winners - one for the top pounds 30,000 award, 10 awards of pounds 1,000, and a further 10 of pounds 500.

Pounds 1,000 winners

Christopher Dawson, Wester Ross: to build a radical new boat for the single-handed transatlantic boat race.

David Powell, Cambridge: to complete watercolour drawings of plants on the islands of the mid-Atlantic ridge.

A C Ingall, Dover: for desk-top publishing equipment with which to produce a parish newsletter.

Tristan Viney, Cirencester: for a 17-year-old with learning difficulties who needs to complete his training to become independently skilled.

Catherine Baines, Market Harborough: to buy a battery-driven all-terrain buggy, enabling her to get out and about.

Keith Anderson, Matlock: to buy maple wood to make violins.

Vanessa Phillips, London: to obtain in-vitro fertilisation.

Irene Hepworth, East Sheen: to 'regain control' in a home with small children.

John Goss, Birmingham: to make 'immortal' paper.

Gerald Harrison, Fordingbridge: to build a maze.

Pounds 500 winners

Kit Sampson, Southwold: to research gypsy baby death rates.

Bill Merton, Skegness: to create a deciduous coppice.

Richard Rosling, London: to learn Bengali, so that he can read Rabindranath Tagore's poems in the original.

John Greenfield, Lewes: to start breeding ornamental ducks.

Paul Samuels, Birmingham: to start training as a tree surgeon.

Susan Flood, Deeside: to join a team filming the great white shark.

Doreen Neal, London: to learn, at 60, how to drive.

Ernest Nelson, Tavistock: to rebuild the tandem his wife and he used to ride together before they married.

Richard Fryer, Hastings: to start building a wooden sailing boat.

Philip Lee, Harrow: to travel to Brazil to conduct the Riberao Preto Symphony Orchestra.

(Photograph omitted)