Historic buildings in the Black Country are being brought back to life as part of a painstaking project to retain some of a city’s important treasures.
Forgotten factories, crumbling community buildings and a derelict water pumping station are among those to be restored in Wolverhampton. Sunbeamland in Pool Street has been made the subject of a survey which will see its future determined, while the regeneration of James Baker & Sons factory in Cleveland Road, All Saints, is almost complete.
An old water pumping station in Goldthorn Hill is also expected to be brought back to life as contemporary housing under plans by owners Severn Trent Water.
Meanwhile terraced homes in Fellows Street, Blakenhall, some of the oldest of their kind in the city and which have not been altered since they built in 1913, are to have their original features restored.
The work is all thanks to the three-year heritage project, which runs to 2011 and sees grants set aside to preserve some of the city’s most precious gems.
Martin Rispin, heritage project officer for All Saints and Blakenhall Community Development, said today the area was well-stocked with industrial heritage.
“It is very early days in some projects but others are either complete or are very near completion and looking spectacular,” he added.
“In the case of Sunbeamland, we have provided a small grant for an archeological and architectural survey which will mean we can determine what it could be used for in the future.”
The Grade II-listed former Baker’s boot factory has just had its scaffolding taken down after £400,000 of intensive work. It has been standing since 1868 and made boots and shoes before closing in the 1970s.
Simon Developments is now progressing with plans for homes, workshops and offices on the site, next to the old Royal Hospital.
It has had brickwork repairs, window restoration and repairs and the reinstatement of a large sign on the side of the factory.
Also undergoing work is the historic Hill Cottage based in Goldthorn Hill.
2 Comments
About time - what spurred them all on after years of the general public telling them to preserve old buildings of the Midlands ?
What kept them?
They couldn’t preserve these relatively minor buildings until they had made sure the real treasures were lost… The Queen’s Cinema, The Hippodrome/Empire Palace, The Theatre Royal/Clifton, The Scala, The Central Arcade, The Queens Arcade…. The former Grammar School and the dissenters chapel in St John’s Lane. Saint John’s Lane itself!
The tight network of narrow streets and their little businesses lost complete with jobs demolished to make way for a ring road never completed.
The ancient and very distinctive street names… lost because an undistinguished mayor got knighted.