PROJECTS By Warren Chapman
Warren Chapman BA (Hons) Dip LA CMLI is an Associate Partner at Gillespies LLP.
Centrepiece Halifax’s Grade I listed Piece Hall is the sole survivor of the eighteenth century northern cloth halls and the centrepiece in the town’s regeneration. Gillespies’ Warren Chapman looks back on the challenges and opportunities created by this vast open space – and the uniquely human skills needed to transform it.
1 1. The Piece Hall restoration project has placed an accessible 21st Century public space at the heart of the town’s civic and economic renaissance. © Paul White / The Piece Hall Trust
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he restoration of the Piece Hall has been one of the UK’s most significant and high profile heritage projects in recent years. An accessible 21st Century public space has been created, which has attracted some 1.6m visitors since it opened in 2017. With the re-imagining of the building’s central courtyard as a key component, its regeneration has positioned the building as a heritage landmark and visitor destination at the heart of Halifax’s civic and economic renaissance and is a catalyst for the development of the town’s new Cultural Quarter.
Built in 1779, the Grade I listed Piece Hall is the sole survivor of the great eighteenth century northern cloth halls. By 1815, the courtyard was being used as a venue for political meetings and public spectacles; the Victorian era saw it become home to a thriving fruit and vegetable market, a horse fair and community ‘sings’. By 1970 it was unused, in disrepair and, although designated as a Scheduled Ancient Monument, escaped demolition by a single vote in 1972. In 2013 the Piece Hall transformation project was made possible by funding from Calderdale Council, with support from Heritage
Lottery Fund, the Garfield Weston Foundation and Wolfson Foundation. Gillespies was commissioned as part of a multidisciplinary design team to transform the public realm within the courtyard of this Grade I listed building. With landscape design at the heart of the project, the reinvention of the courtyard and surrounding streets is the project’s defining feature and required sensitive, committed and imaginative landscape design and collaboration. Gillespies’ challenge was to present a historically-sensitive landscape restoration, that transformed the square into a flexible and multifunctional 21st century public space. It was a brief 27
