Historic Leighton House Museum has received a lottery windfall to help complete its restoration programme.

The former home and studio of eminent Victorian artist and President of the Royal Academy Frederic, Lord Leighton, received a £337,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) which will go towards the planning and development of the final phase of its restoration programme.

The third phase will concentrate Holland Park building’s on extensions added to the east end of the building in the late 1920s and mid-1950s, long after Leighton’s death in 1986.

It follows the completion of major restoration of the museum in 2010, which brought the house back to its original glory, recreating the exotic interiors that Leighton devised, and furnishing them as he intended.

The museum will now begin planning a detailed scheme aimed at transforming the visitor experience, with public areas increased by over a third, and new facilities created including an additional exhibition gallery, new learning and interpretation spaces and the restoration of the original fabric of the building lost within the later extensions.

Sir David Verey, chairman of the Friends of Leighton House said: “This is a small yet world-class museum whose collection and calendar of exhibitions tell the unique story of a great British artist and his contemporaries.

“I look forward to being involved in the museum’s final phase of restoration.”