A £1.7m contract is up for grabs as part of a council’s plan to transform a theatre believed to have been performed at by Shakespeare himself. 

The borough council in King’s Lynn is offering the cash to a company capable of leading the design of its project to refurbish the town’s St George’s Guildhall. 

The authority hopes to turn the 600-year-old venue on King Street into a global tourist destination for fans of the Bard.

The Tory-led council intends to pay for the bulk of the £12.2m project using some £8.1m from Lynn’s government-funded Town Deal pot of money.

It had hoped to pay for a further £3.4m of the cost by applying to the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF), but was unsuccessful in its bid, after the NLHF said the scheme came with a “high risk, particularly in terms of sustainability”.

The council vowed in September to press ahead with the project, after receiving news of the bid’s failure, saying that they would seek alternative funding sources, and not ruling out the possibility of another NHLF bid.