Locomotion, the National Railway Museum at Shildon, is shortlisted for the Care of Collection award.

The shortlist for the 2005 Conservation Awards was announced on May 9 2005. With the support of Sir Paul McCartney, a partnership of the UK’s conservation and restoration bodies recognise outstanding efforts in care and conservation.

As Mark Wood, chairman of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council which originally set up the awards, put it, the prizes reward behind the scenes work.

"Conservators are the health professionals of the heritage sector," he said. "Much of their work takes place behind the scenes, but awards like this help bring conservation to the fore, so that people can appreciate the skills and craftsmanship of the profession."

The Doom wall painting (detail), Holy Trinity Church, Coventry.

The Award for Conservation celebrates completed conservation or restoration projects while the Care of Collections Award recognises projects that have improved the housing of collections.

Work to clean a 500 year old ‘Doom’ wall painting in Holy Trinity Church, Coventry is shortlisted for the Award for Conservation. The painting, restored by Granville & Burbridge, shows Christ directing souls to heaven or hell and includes a group of 15th Century ‘ladettes’, naked and drinking beer.

The restoration of Bronze Age pots discovered at the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site have also been chosen for consideration by the judges. The work, carried out by Wiltshire County Council Conservation Service, took four years and involved undoing the damage from an earlier bodged repair that used bicycle spokes, cement and sealing wax.

In the Lake District, another shortlisted project conserved machinery from a zinc and barites mine abandoned in 1991.

Mine machinery at Force Crag in Cumbria.

Context Engineering, commissioned by the National Trust, used four teams to re-assemble and conserve machines at Force Crag in Cumbria so that the site can be opened to the public.

The Award for the Care of Collection will be presented for the first time in 2005. The award, created to commemorate the 10th birthday of the Conservation Awards, celebrates projects that improve the housing of exhibits.

On the shortlist, Locomotion, the new branch of the National Railway Museum at Shildon, County Durham, has been chosen for a custom-built collections centre that puts 70 vehicles on show to the public.

The Museum of Rural Life in Reading is shortlisted for rehousing its collection of images showing scenes from rural life over the last century.

Further south, the Museum of Rural Life at the University of Reading has been picked for rehousing a unique collection of negatives showing scenes from rural life over the last century.

The collection from the archives of farming magazines includes some extraordinary images such as a camel carrying crop-spraying equipment and a horse wearing a gas mask.

A project at the Museum of London’s Archaeological Archive & Research Centre was recognised for its work using volunteers to help with conservation. With support from museum staff, people with a love of London’s history have made artefacts from 100 years of excavation available to the public.

One of the famous Bronze Age pots unearthed by Victorian archaeology pioneers, Sir Richard Colt Hoare, William Cunnington and General Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt Rivers, around Stonehenge and Avebury.

The winning projects will be announced at the British Museum in November 2005 and will be chosen by a panel of judges that includes figures from television and newspapers as well as from the conservation and museums.

Liz Forgan OBE, chair of the Heritage Lottery Fund, heads the panel which includes journalist and historic buildings expert Dan Cruickshank, George Ferguson, President of RIBA and former of head of conservation at the National Maritime Museum, Gillian Lewis.