'Now or never' to save city’s historic buildings

A DOZEN SITES IN DANGER Appeal as council chief warns: We might not be able to save them all

- Phil Corrigan

CIVIC leaders say it is ‘now or never’ for saving Stoke-on-Trent’s at-risk heritage buildings - warning many could be lost over the next decade.

Stoke-on-Trent City Council has declared a ‘heritage emergency’ estimating £325 million of public and private funding will be needed to safeguard some of the Potteries’ most iconic sites.

These range from the former Chattery Whitfield colliery and the Wedgwood Institute in Burslem to the Price and Kensington teapot factory in Longport and the city’s remaining bottle ovens.

Many are in poor condition owing to decades of under-use and neglect - some such as The Leopard - have seen devastating fires.

The council has published a prospectus setting out the challenges facing each building and their significance to the country and the world, particularly in relation to the ceramics industry. Council leaders hope the declaration will draw national attention to the crisis in Stoke-on-Trent.

It comes as councillors have agreed to spend £6.5 million of taxpayers’ cash on urgent repairs at the Wedgwood Institute, Burslem Indoor Market and the Falcon Works.

But council leader Jane Ashworth, speaking at the prospectus launch event at Claybody Theatre on the Spode site in Stoke, said the council cannot face the challenge alone.

She said: “We have a duty of stewardship to our history. The problem in the city is that we have 275 listed buildings and a lot of them are in a bad state. We as a city council do not have the resource to deal with it properly. That gives us a moral, political, social dilemma. What do we do?