Thanks to an exceptional £100,000 contribution from Cadw, the Welsh Government’s Historic Environment Division, the Architectural Heritage Fund (AHF) is excited to announce that it has awarded new Capital Works Grants to Galeri Caernarfon and Haverfordwest Heritage towards repair and improvement works to help progress their respective projects.
These grants were among eight awards made in the first Grants Panel of the year, where projects across the UK were offered funding totalling £212,500.
You can learn more about the projects by Galeri Caernarfon and Haverfordwest Heritage by reading on below.
Castle Pharmacy
Galeri Caernarfon
Located within the World Heritage Site of the Castle and Town Walls of Edward I, Castle Pharmacy is a Grade II listed building in a prominent position just a few hundred metres from Caernarfon Castle. Since 1895, a pharmacy has operated from this building. Today, it still fulfils this original use, with Rowlands Pharmacy occupying the basement and ground floor. The upper floors are let to three businesses.
Galeri Caernarfon is a social enterprise with over 30 years of experience in delivering large capital projects, including historic building schemes, for the benefit of the community. To build on this successful track record, the organisation now intends to purchase the Castle Pharmacy and complete a programme of repairs to improve its condition, ensuring this significant heritage asset stays in use for generations to come. Once these repairs are complete, it will continue to let the floors of the building to the existing tenants.
Galeri Caernarfon is also one of the 12 Heritage Development Trusts supported by a three-year strategic partnership between AHF and The National Lottery Heritage Fund. These people-powered social enterprises have been created to reimagine, repair, and reuse historic buildings that communities value, reinvesting revenues to build flourishing, prosperous places in every corner of the UK. Through taking on ownership of Castle Pharmacy, Galeri Caernarfon can further diversify its income streams, becoming more resilient and sustainable, and ultimately enabling it to take on additional projects moving forward.
The AHF Capital Works Grant will contribute towards external repairs to the roof, windows, doors and pilasters of Castle Pharmacy, and will also help to improve the building internally.
Temperance Hall
Haverfordwest Heritage
Image: Temperance Hall in Haverfordwest, Wales.
At its March Grants Panel, the AHF also awarded a Capital Works Grant to Haverfordwest Heritage - another Heritage Development Trust – for its Temperance Hall project.
The Italianate façade of the Grade II listed Temperance Hall has graced the Haverfordwest high street since 1889, serving as a cinema, wartime billet and canteen, bingo hall, tax office and Freemasons’ Hall. But after these many incarnations, the heritage building has been unused, unloved and empty since 2009.
Now, through the work of Haverfordwest Heritage, Temperance Hall is being brought into public use once again. The Trust’s plan is to lease the building to a local printmaking collective, which has been co-designing the spaces inside the building to create a new community printworks. This will include an exhibition space, print and design workspaces, and a well-equipped workshop with traditional printing presses that will host an exciting programme of courses. By re-inventing Temperance Hall, Haverfordwest Heritage hopes to kickstart the regeneration of the historic town centre and restore Haverfordwest as a vibrant and exciting place to live, work and visit.
The AHF Capital Works Grant will support the second phase of capital works for this project, which includes improvements to access into and within Temperance Hall, as well as the internal fit out of the building. These improvements will allow a wider range of individuals and organisations to access the building and enable it to be leased to the printmaking collective for its future use.
