BaR News Round-Up November 2024

This month, we have disappointing news of the Art Deco Hartlepool Odeon but encouraging news for another Art Deco gem with progress at Broom Hill Pool in Ipswich.  From the North East to Hampshire and Suffolk, there are lots of other stories of progress.  

Fire and demolition at the Hartlepool Odeon 

We have discovered some striking losses during the updates this month. Most shockingly, the grade II-listed Odeon at Hartlepool was demolished following a fire on 5th October. This beautiful Art Deco cinema in the centre of Hartlepool was deemed structurally unsafe, and we understand that the council granted permission for demolition only ten days after the fire, and demolition began less than twenty-four hours later. A very sad loss indeed.

Housing plans for Keelmen’s Hospital and completed renovation at Worswick Chambers, Newcastle

The grade II*-listed Keelmen’s Hospital has been on the BaR for five years, and was built in 1701 as an almshouse for the Tyneside Keelmen. These men carried coal from stocks on the riverbanks down the Tyne or the Wear on flat-bottomed boats known as ‘keels’ in order to load the larger cargo ships, known as ‘colliers’ waiting in deeper water at the mouth of the river. The Hospital was in operation as an almshouse for 180 years, and its conversion into twenty small flats, with the potential for specialist uses such as sheltered housing, specialist care support, and co-housing seems fitting to its history. Funding has been acquired through the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Architectural Heritage Fund and Historic England, who have worked with Newcastle City Council and the Tyne and Wear Building Preservation Trust in order to develop this scheme. Next door to this building is the grade II-listed Salvation Army Men’s Palace (also on SAVE’s register), a new style post-war Salvation Army Hostel designed by Ryder and Yates - perhaps the Keelmen’s project could be indicative of a shift towards heritage-led development in this area! For more information on the project, see the Architectural Heritage Fund website. 

Elsewhere in Newcastle, the renovation of grade II-listed Worswick Chambers is now complete. The late 19th-century building has been sensitively restored and will be turned into a ‘contemporary leisure space’. Alongside the adjacent early nineteenth-century townhouses at 93-101 Pilgrim Street, this development should see a transformation of Pilgrim Street, one of one of Newcastle’s most important medieval thoroughfares.

Swimmers delight at Broomhill Pool?

The Broomhill Lido was built in 1938 by the Ipswich Borough Surveyor's Department. The carefully designed complex, all in concrete, is a finely detailed example of the Moderne style.  The grade II listed pool closed in 2022 and was threatened with demolition but it did not proceed and a trust was established to protect it and campaign for it to brought back into use.  In 2019 funding was secured from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and the Council to add to the Trust’s own funds but the project was delayed by COVID and costs increased.  Now further funding has been confirmed and final planning and listed building consents are awaited, after which it is hoped work will start promptly.  It is hoped that the project could be completed by 2026.

Lowestoft Town Hall

Another impressive Suffolk project is the scheme to bring the Victorian grade II listed Lowestoft Town Hall back into use.  This work has been identified as an important regeneration project for the town and in 2023 it secured £3, 257, 512 National Lottery Heritage Fund money to "establish a community venue to engage local people, improve residents’ lives and transform the town’s historic heart."  It will also be funded by the Council and the early stages of the project were supported by the Architectural Heritage Fund.  Now the Council have announced that final plans are available showing how the restoration would be carried out but funding issues for the increased costs remain to be finalised.