WORCESTER Twinning Association has been given a £10,000 grant to create a new exhibition.

The Heritage Lottery Fund is giving the association the cash so it can explore Worcester’s links with the French village of Gouzeaucourt.

The village, in the Nord area of northern France, witnessed savage fighting during the First World War and was ‘adopted’ by Worcester in the aftermath of the conflict.

In April 2013, Worcester City Council agreed, as part of its commemoration of the centenary of the First World War, to undertake a temporary twinning with Gouzeaucourt, remembering how the city helped it recover after the war.

Liz Smith, chairman of the twinning association, said: “We are delighted to have been awarded this funding of £10,000 by the Heritage Lottery Fund so that we can give our time to making this exhibition happen.

“We plan to mount the exhibition next summer, 2017.

“We hope that people in Worcester and from around the county will find it interesting and that it will enable the city to remember and understand the sacrifice of those who lived on the front line in France and Worcester’s generosity in helping them to re-build.

“In the spirit of the twinning movement we will be sharing our work with visitors from Gouzeaucourt.”

To accompany the exhibition, there will be a website telling the story of how Gouzeaucourt was almost totally destroyed during the war. The village was either on the front line, or occupied, for the duration of the war.

It will also include detail of how Worcester aided the village’s post-war reconstruction, raising money to re-install a water supply for villagers.

An exhibition was opened in Gouzeaucourt in 2014, detailing what life was like in the village during 1914. The exhibits were planned to change annually, to mirror the different experiences for each year of the First World War.

Worcester is twinned with Gouzeaucourt from 2014 until 2018. The city is also twinned with Le Vesinet in France, Kleve in Germany, Ukmerge in Lithuania and Worcester, in the American state of Massachusetts.