Estates Building – Huddersfield

Bowman Riley has been working with Kirklees Council providing conservation architecture on the Estates Building, a Victorian landmark in Huddersfield town centre. The Grade II listed building is part of the Huddersfield Station Gateway project, which also includes the George Hotel, partially funded by Historic England as part of their Heritage Action Zones initiative.

Designed in a gothic revival style by renowned Victorian architect William Henry Crossland, the 1874 Estates Building is one of Huddersfield’s finest listed buildings.  It was originally used as the estates’ office for the locally important Ramsden family, who were responsible for much of Huddersfield’s development during the industrial revolution.

Owned by Kirklees Council, the Estates Building has been empty since 2002; a portion of the building was converted from outdated offices into 15 affordable apartments.
The remainder of the building remained vacant and required repair and restoration work, including the renewal of windows and stained glass, repairs to ironwork and masonry, the restoration of missing weather vanes and the replacement of slate roof tiles.

Working with Kirklees Council’s conservation team and Historic England, our role is to prepare an external repair strategy to determine the approach to the external works identifying the significance of the building to inform the plan for the repairs to the building’s fabric.

We oversaw the preparation of documents by the building surveyors regarding their suitability for a listed building. We also reviewed the schedule of works prepared by the heritage consultant and held discussions and site meetings with Burlington slate to provide slate and suitability of materials to use on the building.

Our work is helping to bring a local landmark back into use by prolonging the life of the building fabric and enhancing the significance of the external façade and by replacing inappropriate modern interventions.

Read more about the future of the building in local media articles.