This project aimed to interrogate the varied processes, politics and possibilities of ‘creative repurposing’ in local development
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170–175 High Street West, Sunderland, and creative repurposing in Sunderland’s Heritage Action Zone
Author: Mark Liebenrood
This research focusses on a short row of shops in High Street West, Sunderland. Initially built as merchants’ houses in the late eighteenth century, they were converted to shops and one of them was occupied from 1811 by George Binns, a draper. George died in 1836 and was succeeded by his son Henry, who oversaw a move to 173 High Street West.
As Sunderland’s port expanded, the commercial centre of the town began to move westward, and Binns moved with it. In 1884 the store relocated to 38 and 39 Fawcett Street, which became the city’s main shopping street and is still in the commercial centre of Sunderland today. Binns expanded and acquired other businesses, mainly in the North East of England and Scotland, in the early twentieth century. Nicknamed the ’Harrods of the North’, with the second largest shop in the UK, Binns became a household name.
The row of buildings on High Street West were listed at Grade II in 1978, but by the early twenty-first century the site was derelict and sometimes occupied by squatters. A planning application from a property developer in 2011 to demolish the buildings was rejected by Sunderland City Council two years later. That decision was informed by consultations with English Heritage, who advised that the buildings were some of the last remaining evidence of the expansion of Sunderland to the west in the eighteenth century.
Heritage Action Zone and local partners
Restoration of the buildings was seen as a key project for Sunderland’s Heritage Action Zone (HAZ), an area of Sunderland designated by Historic England, which encompasses a number of historic buildings. Heritage Action Zones are a product of the 2016 Culture White Paper, and aim to improve areas of high deprivation. Sunderland is the 23rd most income-deprived local authority in England, according to the ONS. HAZ projects operate on a 50:50 split with local authorities, and in Sunderland a grant funded a project officer at the city council. One aim of the HAZ in Sunderland is to revive parts of the historic fabric and reconnect them to the modern city centre. Overall, the Sunderland HAZ comprises 34 projects on a variety of themes.
Historic England have emphasised that the seeds of this project were a long time in gestation. Assembling a team of partners who could make the HAZ work was an essential precondition for the zone being established, and conversations to develop partnerships had been taking place for around 3–5 years beforehand.
The local authority identified assets for inclusion in the HAZ, but Historic England had been aware of the poor condition of the buildings at 170–175 for some time beforehand, so they were already effectively allocated for the zone.
The central partner in refurbishing these buildings was the Tyne and Wear Building Preservation Trust (TWBPT). The Trust has a longstanding relationship with local authorities in the area, having itself been established as a local authority vehicle in 1979 before becoming independent in 1986 following the abolition of Tyne and Wear authority. Another partner was Open Heritage, an EU-funded project aiming to support the involvement of communities across the EU in processes of adapting heritage assets.
A committed and experienced partner was essential to the project, but so was funding. This came from multiple sources at different stages. In 2016, a £10,000 grant from the Community Rights Fund funded an initial feasibility assessment. Historic England had already produced a study on the buildings between 2012–16. The Architectural Heritage Fund (AHF) provided four grants at different stages of the project, and a £350,000 capital grant that in turn enabled a further £350,000 from a conservation area partnership scheme funded by Sunderland City Council and Historic England. A further award from AHF provided revenue funding for the Tyne and Wear Building Preservation Trust for three years. The AHF grants were made possible by funding from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Including other smaller grants, the project and TWBPT have received a total of over £1 million in funding. A small amount of funding also came from the community via a crowdfunding campaign, ‘Buy a Brick for Sunderland’, which raised over £5,000.
Pop Recs
Community engagement, led by TWBPT, started early on, alongside the feasibility study. That study demonstrated that there would be support from the community for the refurbishment. The community did not want a housing project, due to what were perceived as social problems with some of the housing in the area, and strongly preferred something cultural instead. TWBPT consulted with a group of artists who suggested Pop Recs as a potential partner. Pop Recs was an offshoot of local rock band Frankie and the Heartstrings and began in 2013 with a pop-up record shop on Fawcett Street, followed by a second shop in Stockton Road, not far from Sunderland College campus. Moving from one short let to another, they were not assured of a long-term future. The band’s first drummer Dave Harper was a leading light of the project and aspired to provide a platform for creative people in the city, something he felt had not been available to him and his peers when they were getting started. The Fresh Ideas fund, supported by the Northern Rock Foundation, gave Pop Recs £50,000 for professional fees and business planning. The Architectural Heritage Fund also funded project development.
The local authority purchased the buildings and transferred them to the Trust for a nominal sum in 2018. At the start they were a major liability due to being in poor structural condition, and an £80,000 grant from Historic England to stabilise the buildings was a condition for TWBPT taking them on. That saw the beginning of a highly collaborative process to preserve the buildings and redevelop the site for new uses. Historic England awarded the Heritage Action Zone at the point the council were ready to buy the buildings, which gave the council confidence to proceed.
170 High Street West was in better shape than previously thought, and this building provided an initial base for the project. The Trust began work on refurbishing the buildings with the help of Sunderland College. Apprentices at the college were employed on the project as an opportunity to develop their construction skills, with the building becoming a ‘living classroom’. Pop Recs set up in this building with a temporary café, and the opening was celebrated with a gig.
As well as that initial refurbishment, funding was made available to enhance the exterior in connection with the Tall Ships 2018 event. The arrival of the Tall Ships in Sunderland was expected to draw people from the city centre to the port along High Street West, and the city council paid for the shopfronts to be painted and decorated with the Pop Recs logo.
Community engagement continued, further bringing the building programme to wider attention. A series of heritage open days at the site, facilitated by two researchers from Newcastle University, included two small exhibition displays, one on so-called rebel women of Sunderland, and another on the history of the building. Memories of the location were collected.
Plans for the refurbishment took shape, and Pop Recs stated to the Trust what was needed at the building – they drove the project strongly and had confidence that the vision of new businesses and creative space could be made to work. The eventual result is a combination of three different uses on the ground floor at 170–175. Sunshine, a co-operative whole foods shop, is now open at 170. Pop Recs operate a cafe at 175, which also acts as a training kitchen providing opportunities for young people to learn skills in catering and hospitality. The building in between – the former Binns store – has been converted into a multi-purpose performance space. That space was designed in conjunction with Sunderland Culture to ensure it was a suitable space for theatre. It hosts gigs and other events such as workshops for young children.
All three buildings could be seen as a creative repurposing of what were derelict heritage assets before work started, but the most striking transformation has taken place in the centre building. When it was in use by Binns, the first floor was removed, which led to a significant weakening of the structure. Under the direction of TWBPT, the space has been transformed into a lofty open area. Bright orange girders provide structural support and rear walls have been added, but the transformation has not been at the expense of remnants of the building’s history. The brick walls still bear fragments of timber and old wallpaper. Impressions of former staircases remain, and a truncated flight of wooden stairs leading to the attic is suspended high above. In the small white-painted lobby at the front of the building, wooden roller shutters have been preserved above the windows.
Challenges of Location
As two of the buildings in this small block are now a shop and a cafe, they are likely to rely to some extent on passing trade. But the location may present a challenge in this respect, as it is somewhat beyond the main city centre. The busiest part of town is around The Bridges, the most recent shopping development. As one travels to Mackie’s Corner at the top of Fawcett Street, then eastwards out of town along High Street West, footfall tails off significantly. There are few other shops. A former Travelodge hotel stands empty near a casino and a bowling alley. Further down the street is an open grassed area and a small car park, before one reaches 170–175, which abuts the busy inner ring road. The small block feels quite isolated at present.
It is also in an area which is amongst the 10% most deprived in England, and adjoined by two other similarly deprived areas. Customers for relatively expensive barista-made coffee and similar goods may be likely to come from elsewhere in the city.
There are other sources of income for the buildings, however, with some yet to be realised. A Community Interest Company has its offices above 170, and rooms above 175 are yet to be completed but will eventually comprise lettable space. And the performance space hosts events and regular gigs which, with the benefit of an alcohol licence, bring in more income.
Measuring Success and 'pride in place'
Assessing the project’s success remains an open question, as success can be measured in different ways. Considered solely as a building refurbishment project, its aims have undoubtedly been achieved, with three buildings brought back into use. Although refurbishment of the upper floors is not complete, the aim of providing a permanent home for one of the city’s cultural organisations has been achieved and a new community resource in the form of a multi-use performance space has been created, together with associated jobs.
Creative repurposing is a phrase taken from the Levelling Up white paper, one theme of which is cultural investment in ‘high impact projects that will make a visible positive difference to local areas’. The refurbishment of 170–175 could certainly be seen as a such a project. Although it effectively predates the introduction of Levelling Up policy, it is worth considering how the policy’s criteria of enhancing what it calls ‘pride in place’ might be applied to this project and related work in the city.
No funding was provided for formal evaluation of the Sunderland HAZ at first, but a consultancy firm was eventually commissioned by Historic England to conduct extensive evaluation relating to the impact of changes to the city’s built environment on health and wellbeing and is due to report later this year. That research is a pilot study, intended to inform further evaluation work in the future.
Other recent research conducted for Historic England, working with residents in six locations designated for levelling up, showed that 20% of those consulted thought that historic buildings contributed to civic pride. That was seen as the third most important factor, with parks and green spaces and the people who lived in the locality coming first and second.
Anecdotally, Sunderland council is accustomed to hearing complaints about its management of the city centre. Those complaints can have a historical slant, as they often refer to the demolition of the town hall that happened back in the 1970s. But with the developments in the Heritage Action Zone at Mackie’s Corner and High Street West, and plans now revealed for refurbishment of the Elephant Tea Rooms, local people have been noticing the improvements to the built environment and starting to comment more favourably. From these informal reports, it is clear that some local people care about the condition of their city’s built heritage.
More formal evaluation of this kind of work remains an open question for TWBPT. They are unsure about how to evaluate the success of the project – whether on the criteria of pride in place, or anything similarly affective – beyond the obvious achievements of returning derelict buildings to active and creative use.
There is no doubt that aspects of the city’s heritage have been made more visible as a result of work in the Heritage Action Zone. A significant amount of signage has been created around the city, and the former Binns store now displays a blue plaque, courtesy of Sunderland City Council. The plaque commemorates Sunderland’s Quaker community, highlighting the role of women in the local anti-slavery community and noting that the Binns family, themselves Quakers, refused to stock goods produced by slaves.
Buildings as the seed of future developments
The developments at High Street West were long envisaged as having the potential to seed developments that could reconnect a somewhat isolated area to the main city centre. Some of that potential is in the process of being realised.
A former tyre shop at 177 High Street West and the attached buildings at 1–2 Villiers Street have been transferred to TWBPT and construction work started in mid-July 2022. The Levelling Up Fund has provided a total of £4.5m, of which £350,000 will go to the tyre shop buildings. The AHF have matched this funding and also funded project development in conjunction with Historic England. The remainder of the Levelling Up grant is allocated to the open space just beyond the tyre shop building, currently a combination of car parking and grassed areas. The organisation Create Streets has been working with two other organisations to develop plans for a new neighbourhood in this area.
So at this stage, the refurbishment of 170–175 High Street West looks set to be the start of a programme of regeneration that spreads towards the main city centre. That was one of the larger aims of the project, and it remains to be seen how much of an impact it will have on this area of the city in the longer term.
The author wishes to thank Jules Brown and Maria Carballeira, Historic England; Sarah Carr, Sunderland City Council; Martin Hulse, Tyne and Wear Building Preservation Trust; and Michael McKnight, Pop Recs. Dave Harper of Pop Recs sadly died in 2021.
Key Insights
- Collaboration with committed local partners was essential to the project’s success.
- The refurbishment was only possible with grants and fundraising from a wide variety of sources.
- The project was the fruit of dialogue, planning and co-operation over a period of years beforehand.
Areas for Investigation
- There are different ways of measuring success, and evaluating pride in place – a criterion of Levelling Up policy – remains an open question.
- The longer-term success of the project as the start of revitalising a corridor into the city will only become apparent in many years to come.
