Flats planned for historic laceworks site
BUILDINGS are set to be converted into flats in a “neglected” part of the city where the Birkin family once manufactured lace.
The development will be at a site known as Maville Works in Beech Avenue, Sherwood Rise.
One building known as No Limits House and a former yarn store are set to be brought into residential use, each to be converted into seven flats.
Hilary Silvester, executive chair of Nottingham Civic Society, explained that the area was originally developed with “houses for workpeople and also houses for the managers as well as the actual factories”.
“It’s kind of been a neglected area of industrial Nottingham, nobody has really really taken much interest – not in the way some years ago people were interested in the Lace Market,” she said. “That area it’s quite prominent, up on Sherwood Rise.”
She said it was important the site was “treated in a fashion that will retain its character”.
Maville House, a large former lace factory, is to the south of Beech Avenue.
Dating from the mid-1800s, the property shares the land with another former lace factory called the White House.
The buildings were originally built for, and occupied by, Guy Birkin of the Birkin lacemaking family.
Of local significance, the Birkin Building, a landmark in Broadway, was designed by Thomas Chamber Hine for the family in 1855.
Mr S Asmal, of Maville Court Ltd, has submitted plans to the city council to convert the old yarn store and No Limits House.
A statement in the planning application read: “The conversion of the buildings will ensure that the buildings will have a viable future.
“The proposed external alterations have already been approved and the works commenced, and thus it is not necessary to submit further planning application for these works.”
The application clarifies that the White House is vacant.
Previous plans to convert this building to 48 apartments expired without work starting.
But a new application for the conversion of the property is expected soon.