Two blots on the city’s landscape and the Lottery scheme that left them behind
POSITIVE OVERALL VERDICT ON HULL’S FIRST INNER-CITY LOTTERYBACKED REGENERATION SCHEME
ARECENT raid on an illegal cannabis factory might seem like an unlikely starting point to reflect on a major regeneration scheme in Hull.
But while watching police officers recover 200 plants from the former Premier Work and Leisure Wear store on Hessle Road, my thoughts wandered to two equally imposing and equally empty buildings nearby.
Staring at the boarded-up City Temple church and the vacant three-storey shop and upper office space on the corner of Coltman Street got me thinking whether Hull’s first Lottery-funded inner-city heritage facelift scheme had been a success.
The church and the Coltman Street property were among the four main flagship projects of the St Andrews Townscape Heritage Initiative which ran between 2007 and 2013. Nearly ten years on and despite being hailed at the time as important architectural gateways to Hessle Road, they are both still stubbornly empty and unused.
During the THI’S lifespan, around £2m was allocated in grants to be spent on restoring historic features on houses, commercial properties and public buildings. In every case, grants were awarded on condition that the property owner involved should also make a financial contribution towards the work.
The other two major projects
were a facelift for the Western Library in the Boulevard and, most notably, the restoration of a working fountain in the Boulevard which mirrored an original destroyed by a car in 1924. Both schemes also received council funding and have been success stories whereas the City Temple and the Coltman Street building sadly remain blots on the landscape.
A £150,000 grant towards facelift work at the church helped pay for a new roof, boundary railings and new doors. However, previous plans to convert the grade two listed building into 18 apartments, a charity shop and a cafe have yet to see any actual work starting at the property.
Similar external work including new windows, ornate guttering and a new roof on the shop and office complex opposite at the Coltman Street junction has unfortunately delivered similar negative results. The guttering is now littered with weeds and the shop’s external fascia boards are disintegrating.
One nearby business owner said: “The church has been in a state for years. Even now, you can watch the pigeons going in and out through the broken window at the front.
“It’s a pity all that money got spent for nothing. The last time there was a break-in there I heard the police refused to go inside because of the poor condition of the place. It was said to be too dangerous to enter.”
Overall, a total of 54 schemes
were carried out on 67 buildings in the immediate area with one obvious positive spin-off being regular work for local building contractors.
The THI also staged a series of courses for people living in the area to learn more about traditional building skills such as joinery as well as tips on maintaining their Victorian era properties, including how to draught-proof period sliding sash windows.
Coltman Street resident Simon Kelsey was among those to benefit from the scheme, securing a £56,000 grant towards the cost of restoring a derelict Victorian townhouse dating from 1853 which had once been the home of fishing magnate Christopher Pickering. He thinks the TFI was a success with a few exceptions.
“I would say that the scheme was generally excellent and helped residents put back original features that people like myself would never have been able to afford otherwise. It definitely helped save some buildings and preserve the character of the area.
“Obviously, the Boulevard fountain remains popular and was a great success helped by the Heritage Lottery Fund and so was the library. Many buildings around here do not benefit from rich owners and reinstating original features like railings and cast-iron gutters does not add much value to low-value housing in poor neighbourhoods so Lottery funding is invaluable for areas like ours. There have clearly been waste and failures but, on the whole, it has been a positive thing for the area.”