The Spitalfields Trust: One foot in the past
ABOVE (click on gallery image to view larger picture): The repair and restoration of Allt-y-Bela in Usk, Monmouthshire, is one of The Spitalfield Trust's most recent successes. The building is now used as a B&B (07892 403103; alltybela.co.uk).
Caroline Wheater looks into the history of The Spitalfields Trust.
The Spitalfields Trust was set up 33 years ago, with the express aim of saving the remaining Georgian houses in Spitalfields, London, which were under threat of redevelopment as the city’s financial centre expanded eastwards. The network of early 18th-century streets, which includes Fournier, Princelet, Wilkes, Elder and Folgate Streets, have survived because of the Trust’s intervention. Other areas, such as Spital Square, which was full of grand houses in the 1970s, were sadly decimated. The Trust’s experience with, and understanding of Georgian buildings was one of the main reasons it became Rochester Cathedral’s preferred bidder for Minor Canon Row.
‘Building preservation trusts normally exist to help a single building, but the Spitalfields Trust is unusual because we’ve gone on to do other things,’ says Oliver Leigh-Wood, who has been a trustee for over 30 years. ‘We watch lots of historically interesting buildings all over the country to see what is happening. We do take grants from English Heritage and CADW and rely heavily on the loans that are available from the Architectural Heritage Fund, which is set up to help building preservation trusts.’
Recent successes have been the repair and restoration of Allt-y-Bela in Usk (above), Monmouthshire, a late medieval farmhouse that is now a B&B (07892 403103; alltybela.co.uk), and the rescue of the derelict, about-to-be-demolished, Whitechapel terrace in Varden and Turner Streets. Built between 1809 and 1816, the houses are now comfortable homes again. Another project, Shurland Hall on the Isle of Sheppey, is a large Tudor gatehouse that the Trust has spent five years restoring.
Contact the Spitalfields Trust by emailing spitalfields.trust@hotmail.com.
Find out more about the restoration of Minor Canon Row
WRODS CAROLINE WHEATER PHOTOGRAPHS CAROLINE WHEATER; OLIVER LEIGH-WOOD
Featured in the June 2011 issue of Period Living
