Phil Ward and Neall Bower

Conservation Team & Regeneration Team
Leeds City Council

Phil Ward leads the City Council’s Conservation Team responsible for managing the historic environment in the Leeds.  He has taken a special interest in the First White Cloth Hall and has been involved in securing funding to restore the First White Cloth Hall since 2008.  He is part of a small project team, which also includes co-speaker, Neall Bower, responsible for regenerating the First White Cloth Hall and the wider Kirkgate area.

Neal Bower is in the section of the regeneration team which focuses on regeneration with heritage at its heart. This approach acknowledges that the rich heritage of Leeds can provide a foundation for successful regeneration and to ignore this potential would be to the detriment of the vitality of the city.

Abstract

The First White Cloth Hall:  Leeds' hidden treasure

Built in 1711 as a result of competition from Wakefield to Leeds’ regional supremacy in the cloth trade, the First White Cloth Hall is arguably Leeds’ most important historic building.  It is the oldest surviving cloth hall in the country, but is less well known than the larger cloth halls that replaced it.  Leeds City Council has secured funding to restore the building and is at the early stages of putting together a development scheme.  But what is the proper response to a building which has undergone several major phases of alteration since it ceased its original function in the middle of the eighteenth century?  The talk will address this issue, outline the rise and fall of “Leeds’ Lost Treasure” and provide insight into plans to revive it.