Historic parts of the North-East are set to be restored to their former glory with £7.5m in cash grants, it was announced today.

Run-down seaside areas, such as Seaton Carew and the Headland in Hartlepool, will undergo restoration.

And for the first time, grants have been awarded to some areas blighted by the foot-and-mouth crisis, including villages in the Durham Dales and North Yorkshire Moors.

Northgate in Darlington and parts of the Lower Ouseburn Valley in Newcastle will benefit from the restoration of derelict buildings and improvements of shopping areas.

The grants, partially funded by English Heritage, are mainly targeting decaying rural, seaside and inner-city areas.

Nationally, English Heritage is injecting £9m into the scheme to revive tourism in run-down areas.

The grants subsidise three-year programmes of neighbourhood renewal, and are made under a fourth round of Heritage Economic Regeneration Schemes (HERS).

And for every £100,000 of Heritage cash, £480,000 is generated from other sources, making a total of £7.5m to help the North-East.

English Heritage funding in the North-East includes:

*£90,700 to be spent on brightening up the image of commercial premises in Northgate, Darlington, which contains Victorian and Edwardian properties;

*£40,000 to villages in the Durham Dales, to help support existing businesses there and revive the traditional characters of the villages. Money will be spent on building repairs and reinstating architectural details;

*£20,000 to maintain buildings, yards and alleyways in Bedale;

* £60,000 to Ripon, to help repair more than 30 vacant, derelict properties in historic streets;

*£50,000 to repair decaying buildings in Hartlepool's historic Headland area; * £90,700 to provide building owners in Seaton Carew with the means to fund vital building repair on properties and land facing directly on to the sea;

*£100,000 to repair over 20 sites of heritage merit in Newcastle's Lower Ouseburn Valley, which was the home of Newcastle's early craft industries;

*£40,000 for conservation projects in Malton, Norton, Pickering and Kirkbymoorside.

Peter de Lange, acting North-East regional director of English Heritage, said: "The projects receiving funding reflects the diversity of every aspect of the North-East's heritage, from seaside ports to rural communities and urban areas."