£1m awarded to help fund urgent repairs at historic city site
Repair works on a landmark mill on the South Bank, in Leeds, have received a £1m boost.
Temple Works is to be part of the planned British Library building in Leeds.
Historic England has awarded a £636,000 grant to help secure the Holbeck property’s roof and £400,000 for repairs to the neighbouring Counting House.
The Grade I listed site, which has been empty for 20 years, had been a mail order warehouse before plans for retailer Burberry to use it were dropped in 2017.
It is intended that the building will become a new public space for the British Library, whose nearby base in Boston Spa is home to more than three-quarters of the library’s collection.
The mill complex completed in the 1840s was one of the first, large-scale single-storey factories, according to Historic England.
Cash from the Government’s Heritage Stimulus Fund will contribute to work to prop up the interior of the mill, on the Heritage at Risk Register since 2000, until permanent repairs can be undertaken.
The West Yorkshire Combined Authority awarded the project a £5m grant last year.
Councillor Helen Hayden said the work would “repurpose an important part of our city’s heritage and help drive wider regeneration in Leeds’ South Bank”.
Historic England’s additional funding for the Counting House will support repairs to the roof and walls, making the building watertight before the next phase of refurbishment.
Work is scheduled to be finished in time for Leeds’ Year of Culture in 2023.
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