Calverley Old Hall restoration moves step closer to reality after planning boost

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Calverley Old Hall. Photo: Mark Stevenson

Words: John Baron

Plans to transform historic Calverley Old Hall into a 10-person holiday let have been granted by Leeds City Council.

Hall owners The Landmark Trust’s plans also include refurbishing and altering the building to provide a community room with ancillary facilities and one residential dwelling.

The building, parts of which date back to the 14th century, is Grade I listed and is of special architectural and historic interest. It’s also listed on the city’s Heritage At Risk register.

Calverley Old Hall is a ‘building at risk’. Photo: Anne Akers

A council planning officer’s report adds:

“The building sits on the ‘at risk’ register and subsequently the significance is under threat due to the poor condition of parts of the building. The Applicant states that it is no longer sufficient to apply on-going maintenance to remedy the condition of the building and substantial works are needed in union with securing a viable and sustainable future for this regionally important heritage asset.”

According to the Trust’s website, the great hall will become an impressive open space for living, cooking and eating, just as it would have been in the 15th century. 

The solar block will hold bedrooms on the ground floor and upstairs, the Calverley family’s private rooms will become the sitting room; a convivial space beneath decorated roof trusses, lit by a long, stone, transomed and mullioned window, and warmed once more by a fire in its magnificent 14th-century stone fireplace.

It says the existing structures and surviving fabric of the building will be gently and sensitively repaired, and where the original fabric has disappeared – as with the lost cross passage and stairs – the new interventions will be clearly identifiable as 21st-century repairs. 

The lodging block, the current place where people stay, will become a community space and residential flat, with separate entrances and parking. The full Calverley Old Hall plans can be viewed in full here.

Calverley old hall
Restoration bid: Calverley Old Hall. Photo: Anne Akers

Funding appeal

Earlier this year the Landmark Trust launched a major appeal to help restore the hall and its grounds.

The Trust has already raised more than £2million and needs to raise a further £427,000. This is to support a major grant bid to the National Lottery Heritage Fund, which they hope will support the works to the hall.

The Landmark Trust owns a number of historic properties, which are used as holiday accommodation.  

For more of WLD‘s coverage of Calverley Old Hall, follow this link.

More Calverley news and views can be found here.

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