Armitage wins Gaskell restoration brief
ARMITAGE Construction has won a £1.2m contract to renovate the former home of Victorian novelist Elizabeth Gaskell.
The Gaskell Society has been campaigning for some time to restore the grade II-listed Regency-style villa in Plymouth Grove, Manchester.
The group secured £750,000 for the exterior in 2010 and last year received £1.85m from the Heritage Lottery Fund to return the interior of the house, built in 1830, to its original state.
Stockport-based Armitage said it will carry out a complete renovation including the replacement of the ornamental plaster, new doors and windows and floor finishes. It will also repair boundary walls and install replica iron railings.
Elizabeth Gaskell moved in in 1850 and wrote Cranford, North and South and Wives and Daughters while living at the house until her death in 1865. She was visited there by other authors such as Charles Dickens and Charlotte Bronte.
To the Gaskell Society the building’s literary significance is second only to the Bronte Parsonage at Haworth, near Bradford and it is, “therefore of international, national and local importance”.
Its website adds: “It is one of very few Regency-style Villas left in Manchester, and has many original features and beautiful public rooms.”
Daniel Armitage, part of the fourth generation of the family now running Armitage Construction, said “It is a pleasure and an honour to be involved with this beautiful old building.”
The architect on the scheme is the Stockport-based Bernard Taylor Partnership. Once the building has been completed the main reception rooms will be open to the public and used for events such as local lectures and exhibitions.
