Up for sale: Grange Court - (but be prepared to spend £2m)

1:44pm Friday 16th May 2008

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IT’S black and white – one of Herefordshire’s oldest architectural gems is on sale for only £1.

Leominster Area Regeneration Company (LARC) can buy Grange Court for a quid, but only if it comes up with £800,000 of its own.

That would release £1 million worth of Lottery funding to kick-start the biggest makeover of Grange Court since it was moved from Leominster town centre in 1856.

This week, Herefordshire Council, working with LARC, learned that the lottery bid had succeeded – as long as LARC could match it with a similar sum needed for the makeover. A plan for the work and listed building consent sealed the deal.

Herefordshire Council has already agreed in principle to sell Grange Court to LARC for £1 after a series of negotiations that started last year. The offer depends on LARC coming up with £800,000 of its own.

To do that, LARC is looking to tap into the same community spirit that fuelled Leominster’s fight for a new swimming pool.

Wendy Coombey, of LARC, said a thumbs-up from the Lottery was the “first important step” in securing a future for Grange Court. A major round of consultation was on the way to see what the site could be used for, she said.

Black-and-white Grange Court is one of the largest and most distinctive timber-framed buildings left not only in Herefordshire but the whole of the UK. It went up in 1633 at what is now the Broad Street junction, built by then royal carpenter John Abel, himself a Herefordshire man, to be Leomin-ster’s Market House.

By 1853 the town’s growth made the Market House a traffic obstruction, but it took an Act of Parliament to say so. Three years later the house was sold to a local family and shifted to The Grange.

There, the house has assumed iconic status as a symbol of Leominster itself, for which the town has long felt a strong sense of ownership – despite the apparent lack of any legal covenant to confirm this.

A local outcry stopped the house from being shipped out to America in 1939, and instead it became a base for the old Leominster Borough Council.

The town rallied round again in 1992 to stop a modern extension being built on to the site so it could serve as an HQ for the then Leominster District Council.

Grange Court came to Herefordshire Council on the authority’s creation in 1998. Three years ago elements among the town council wanted to step in and buy the site as fears were raised about its future in the county council’s hands.

The town council even got as far as asking its county counterpart for a valuation.

Herefordshire Council has been thinking over Grange Court’s future for some time. Talks with LARC started in the autumn with a major community project being the ideal outcome.

Councillor Adrian Blackshaw, cabinet member for community services, said the success of the talks was “great news” for Leominster.

“I’m delighted that such a historic building is set to be used by its community for the foreseeable future,” he said.