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AHF supported projects move forward across Scotland
6 February 2018
Scotland
A number of AHF-supported projects have achieved major milestones in their journeys toward sustainable new uses in the last month.
Campbeltown Picture House is one of the first purpose built cinemas in Scotland, built in 1913. This Category-A listed building is unique, with a Glasgow school art nouveau exterior and an equally impressive and unusual ‘atmospheric style’ interior. It survives today as a rare space, largely unaltered from the 1935 remodelling by the original architect Albert V. Gardner.
The Centenary Project was completed in December 2017 restoring this magnificent building and creating a modern cinema destination complete with a second screen, new foyer and café, and spaces for exhibitions, displays, education and community activities. A formal opening will take place later in 2018.
The AHF helped pay for the project organiser to deliver the Centenary Restoration Project.
The former Carlton Hill Observatory in Edinburgh is set to be reborn in its new guise as a home for the Collective Gallery - the group have now taken possession of the building from the contractors prior to the site opening to the public in the Spring of 2018. The £4m restoration project includes conservation of the Observatory’s original 19th century Playfair designs, its original telescopes and astronomical instruments and its grounds, along with the creation of a subterranean gallery, and the building of a new restaurant. The AHF helped get the project started with a viability grant, and then Project Development Grant towards the project organiser and professional fees.
Image by Skin. Creative Commons License 2.0.
The Peter Pan Moat Brae Trust are pressing ahead with the capital works to transform Moat Brae house in Dumfries into a National Centre for Children’s Literature and Storytelling - work started on site in April 2017 and should be complete by the end of 2018. £7.4m of funding had now been secured for the scheme with a further £600,000 needed to complete the final phase this year.
The Scottish government's Regeneration Capital Grant Fund (RCGF) has been identified as a potential source of funding, and the local authority has submitted an application with the outcome expected to be known by March.
The AHF was an early supporter of this project, helping fund the original options appraisal in 2009, and providing further development funding the help get the project started in 2011 and 2013.
In Glasgow, work is finally about to start to bring the last of the Gorbal’s historic tenements, the Category A-listed former British Linen Bank Tenement, back to life - as its originally designed use as lettable flats above a shop. It was built in 1900 and designed by James Salmon, an architect whose other works include the Lion Chambers on Hope Street and the Hatrack Building in St Vincent Street. The local housing association, Southside HA, have been leading on a project that is due to start on site in February 2018, and when complete will see it housing a ground floor commercial unit and six two-bedroom flats for mid-market rent.
The AHF helped Glasgow Building Preservation Trust fund an options appraisal for the building back in 2008, and with Southside taking the project forward also helped fund their development costs in 2015.
AHF Grant-aid in Scotland is only possible thanks to funding from Historic Environment Scotland.