Recovery helps business hub plan for Stoke's historic buildings

Economic recovery is bolstering industrial heritage in the home of the UK ceramics industry, with the revival of two big projects in Stoke to turn historic buildings into business hubs.

The Wedgwood Institute was built in the 1860s by public subscription to commemorate Josiah Wedgwood, the great 18th-century industrialist, as a place for working men to learn about science and the arts.

More recently it operated as a public library until it was closed in 2008 and fell derelict.

Now, with the support of the Prince's Regeneration Trust, a charity founded by Prince Charles, work is under way to stabilise and clean the building and its striking terracotta-sculpture-panelled facades. The aim is create a small enterprise incubator for digital and creative start-ups that will support up to 150 jobs.

"What was an impossible project when we first looked at it has become possible because of the improvements in the economy," says Ros Kerslake, chief executive of the trust.

While regeneration funds for councils and other public bodies have been cut by the government, the strengthening economy means a bigger market for turning historic sites into business centres.

Ms Kerslake says there has been "very strong interest" from companies interested in renting space in the Wedgwood building.

The business plan ruled out as too difficult the option of converting the building for retail, office or storage. Instead, it identified a shortage of small workshops and business units in Stoke, at a time when start-up numbers are increasing as confidence returns.

Andrew Groves from Harris Lamb, a commercial property agency in Stoke, says: "There has been an increase in take-up of industrial buildings for the last couple of years but this is partly because nothing has been built speculatively since 2008."

Historic England, the body that preserves and lists historic buildings, is providing £200,000 towards the Wedgwood Institute restoration. Stoke-on-Trent city council, the Heritage Lottery Fund and the European Regional Development Fund are also involved. The trust estimates the total restoration cost will be about £6m.

The Prince's Regeneration Trust is also involved in the restoration of Middleport, the UK's oldest continuously working pottery which, in 2011, was under threat of closure by its owners Denby Pottery, now part of Hilco Capital Partners, a US private equity company.

The charity raised £7.5m to rebuild the factory and create a visitor centre and business units, leasing back the other half of the original works to Denby, which continues to make blue and white Burleigh china there.

It has often been a challenge to get funding for projects in regions such as Stoke, where property values are low. Developers who look at old industrial sites for potential residential use can be put off by lack of local market confidence.

Moreover, not all of these sites can be reused. Options may be limited by the presence of historic machinery, and industrial sites that survive as archaeological monuments or have historic engineering structures can pose particularly difficult conservation challenges.

However, Greg Luton of Historic England says developers have become more willing to look at such projects. "Risk-taking has definitely increased, with people more willing to look at some of these sites which might not have been seen as economically viable over the past few years."

The success of such projects has also been buoyed by the public enthusiasm for restoration, fuelled in no small part by television programmes, he says.

New uses can include for housing, hotels, shops and cultural venues, as well as workshop and manufacturing space.

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Stoke council has a good record of reusing old pottery buildings. The former Enson site is now the UK centre for teaching about housing refurbishment and retrofitting.

Its next project is a £19m makeover of the Spode pottery works, a six-acre site that closed in 2008 - like many of the best-known brands unable to compete against cheap imports.

"There has to be an end-use for these buildings. Restoration for its own sake is no good," says Ruth Rosenau of Stoke council.

"Spode is our biggest project. We're keeping it to its origins by making it a centre for creative companies but it's going to be modern."

Sarah Lewis, heritage at risk adviser at Historic England, says a number of sites have been removed from the "at risk" register [of places deemed most at risk of neglect, decay or inappropriate development] in the West Midlands, some of which have been on the register since 1998.

She cites a foundry in Stourbridge turned into a doctor's surgery and a coffin works in Birmingham that has been turned into business units and a visitor centre. She says it Is "the change in the economic climate" that Is driving such developments.

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