A grade A listed building that once served as a ballroom is to be transformed into a museum with adjacent offices.

The Dalkeith Corn Exchange, which dates back to 1854, will get a new lease of life thanks to funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund and Historic Scotland.

Melville Housing has won development funding of £48,800 to carry out feasibility work in order to submit a full grant application later this year.

If that is successful, work will begin later in 2013 and be completed the following year. Historic Scotland has also awarded a Building Repair Grant of £83,864.

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Melville's plans for the refurbishment, which has an estimated cost of £.5m, include installing solar panels and a ground source heat pump.

Some of the refurbished building's offices will be occupied by Melville, if the plan goes ahead.

The project should also provide conservation work training opportunities for unemployed young people, in conjunction with Telford College in Edinburgh.

Trainees would work on the re-pointing of the building's south elevation.

Brian Christie of Melville Housing said: "The Corn Exchange has a long history of community use and is close to the hearts of many local people, especially those who have happy memories of when it was the' Empress Ballroom' in the 1940s & 50s where some met their future spouses. We have received overwhelming support for our proposals which will revitalise a building that has played such an important part in the heritage of Midlothian."

(NE/GK)