A HUT in Dymock Poets country, which has been welcoming information-seeking visitors since 1992, is undergoing the final stages of a revamp, thanks the kindness of local businesses and Lottery funding.

The Garland Hut at Ryton, in the cottage garden of Friends of the Dymock Poets member, Barbara Davis, has undergone a multi-thousand pound transformation into a picnic stop on popular cycle and walking routes.

The work was made possible by £5000 of at-cost sponsorship from local timber and landscaping businesses, to match grant funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund, managed by the Moment Centenary Project.

Chris Bligh, of the Moment Centenary Project said: “Thanks to the generous support of local landscaping companies the renovated Garland Hut now creates a welcome shelter, a quiet picnic pause.

"We are to create further new phone apps, a comprehensive heritage map index, and an online landscape and social history exhibition within the hut – ready for the spring and a new daffodil season, when this will become a new focus of cultural, literary and landscape interpretation and, more to the point, a stop for rest and recuperation.”

The trade sponsors include Bradfords Building Supplies, Brandon Tool Hire, Lydney Park Sawmills, Bromsberrow Sand and Gravel, with design and project managers Gardens Sorted of Kempley, supervised by Sam Ferguson of Dymock.

Artist Barbara Davis’ garden has welcomed visitors to The Garland Hut information facility since 1992, when it was erected by the Friends of Dymock Poets and John Masefield Society.

It carries information about the poets who settled in or visited the Dymock area prior to the First World War, including Robert Frost, Edward Thomas and Rupert Brooke.

With the recent involvement of the Ledbury Cycling Forum and the Newent Cycle Club, Ryton has become the confluence of the brown sign-posted road routes, along with the Windcross Paths Group route known as Poets Path 2, and the John Masefield Trail.