Vital Grant For Elizabeth Gaskell’s Manchester Home

Moves to save one of Manchester’s most important literary houses – and a key part of the city’s architectural heritage – take a step closer today.

English Heritage has made an £16,215 grant to the Manchester Historic Buildings Trust so that emergency repairs can be carried out to the roof and gutters of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Manchester home – and a longer term project to save the historic building can be developed.

The Grade II* house, on Plymouth Grove, is a rare survivor of a detached Regency style villa – and its listing puts it in the top seven per cent of buildings of architectural interest in the country.

But 84 Plymouth Grove now needs major structural repairs and has been put on the English Heritage Buildings at Risk register. English Heritage along with the Manchester Historic Buildings Trust, which owns the building, and the Heritage Lottery Fund are all seeking to put a rescue package together.

English Heritage’s Regional Director Henry Owen John said:

“This building is historically important, especially due to its association with Elizabeth Gaskell, a social commentator of international standing on the industrialisation of England.

“We are very supportive of the Trust’s initiative to develop a project to safely remove the house from English Heritage’s Buildings at Risk register and bring it back into use as a centre for the interpretation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s work and the industrial revolution more widely. We have offered the Trust a project development grant, including a small sum for emergency repairs, and are working with its members as they develop a more substantive bid for funding.“
   
In literary terms the importance of the house can hardly be overstated. For 15 years – between 1850 and 1865 – it was home to one of Britain’s best-known writers, Mrs Gaskell and her family, as she researched and wrote most of her major works, including Cranford, North and South, Ruth, Wives and Daughters and Life of Charlotte Bronte, the first biography of modern times.

Mrs Gaskell’s work, which focussed on the social and political issues of the time brought her to the attention of Dickens, who arranged for her work to be published in his journal Household Words.

Janet Allan of the Manchester Historic Buildings Trust and the Gaskell Society said:

“Elizabeth Gaskell’s writing lives on for future generations to enjoy – now, hopefully, those future generations will also be able to enjoy visiting her Manchester home.

“If we can protect and restore Gaskell House – and bring it back into everyday use – not only will that preserve an important part of Manchester’s literary heritage, it will be a major inspiration to readers old and new and be a focus for students of Mrs Gaskell’s writing.”

Elizabeth Gaskell’s novels brought the harsh reality of work and life in working class Manchester to national attention and the literary world responded by lionising the author.

Ironically, the only one of her major works not to be written while she lived in Manchester was her first novel Mary Barton, which was subtitled A Tale of Manchester Life.

Such was Elizabeth Gaskell’s standing in the Victorian literary world, in her Plymouth Grove home, she hosted Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens and WM Thackeray.

The grant awarded by English Heritage will allow crucial roof and drainage work to take place along with a consultation study on the foundations and structure to assist the Manchester Historic Buildings Trust in its quest to raise £2.2million to save and restore the building.