Issue 38 Summer web 23 - Flipbook - Page 36
Sadly, over time, the town hall proved very challenging
to maintain, it was internally modified to suit the council’s
evolving needs and by the 2010’s was not fully used
and in a state where significant restoration and repair
was needed. In 2018 the council heard they had been
successful in securing a NLHF major batch funding award
of just under £9m which gave everyone the confidence
that a project of full scale restoration was possible.
furniture and timber cleaning, cleaning of the Great Hall
ceiling and work with artists on the co-creation of the interpretation. We have bolstered the conservation work
with 20 x 16 week paid work placements for young people
from the local college to work alongside our conservators.
Currently we are training 5 archaeological trainees on site
who will be joined by a further 10 volunteers next month.
We have currently been on site for over 29 months and
are due to reopen most of the public areas in early
Autumn 2023. Our main contractor is HH Smith of
Manchester who were procured via a 2 stage OJEU
process. The project is a multi-million pound set of
contracts and has included a substantial contribution
form Rochdale Borough Council, nearly £9m from the
NLHF and nearly £2m from the central government
decarbonisation fund (Salix) allowing us to install a new
sub-station and air source heat pumps. The works include
a major redevelopment of the public realm that
surrounded the site, including the closure of roads,
relocation of car parking and the creation of a pedestrianised events space and setting fitting of a building of this
significance. This newly formed public square will be the
largest in the country when complete.
Despite the project being developed and procured during
Covid 19 the specialist teams have been on site since
January 2021. Restoring a building of this quality is
challenging and the market regard it a high risk endeavour. The project needed to engage early with the specialists that would be undertaking the cleaning and repair of
the stained glass and decorative painted surfaces. In order
to de-risk the project for the main contractor the team
decided to name the specialists within the contract, a
practice that is not used frequently nowadays and is often
regarded as unadvisable. However on this project it
has been absolutely essential and allowed long term
partnerships to emerge.
One of the real benefits of these partnerships is that
the team can work together to develop and deliver
substantive training and volunteer programmes for young
people and residents of Rochdale. These have proved
immensely valuable and popular and to date we have
provided 2 x 12 week conservation training courses for
19 interested local people, engaged 914 volunteers who
undertake research and archive documentation work,
The team were working at the rear of the town hall when
they found remnants of a very old and deep water
management system which had failed and was causing
significant challenges below ground. After specialist
research and investigation the team have learnt that
Broadfield Park Slopes which sits to the south of the town
Above, specialist painted surfaces conservator at work in the mayors reception room
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