Oswestry council wants specialist builder for £3.5m Llwyd Mansion shop restoration project
A £3.5m project to restore a historic shop building in Oswestry town centre is set to move forward after the town council advertised for a specialist for early works.
Oswestry Town Council is set to appoint an "experienced heritage conservation building team" as part of a project to restore the 15th century Llwyd Mansion building in the town.
The authority says the successful bidder will be required to carry out a series of enabling works, repairs and surveys as plans to renovate the Grade I listed building before the project moves into its delivery stage.
Tender documents advertised on the town council's website this week include a scope of works, but not the total value of the contract.
The Cross Street building has been empty since 2022 when the building's most recent occupiers, a hairdressing business, moved out.
Oswestry Town Council purchased it for £75,000 in 2023, intending to restore the building to full use, with shop units planned for the ground floor frontage, alongside gallery space and visitor accommodation on the upper floors.
In the meantime, Historic England placed Llwyd Mansion on its "at risk" register, due to what it describes as "serious subsidence with complex structural activity" at the building, adding that there was a: "potentially dangerous risk of floor collapse on the upper levels" due to water leaks and failed plaster.
Llwyd Mansion was built in 1464 as a merchant’s house - with a plaster roundel bearing the coat of arms of the Llwyd family believed to have been added during a later restoration in the 1800s.
As a Grade I listed building, Llwyd Mansion is considered to be of "exceptional interest" by heritage experts, with only 2.5 percent of all listed buildings in the country falling into the Grade I category, which also includes Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament.
The cost of the project has been estimated at around £3.5 million by Oswestry Town Council, who received a grant of around £480,000 from the National Lottry Heritage Fund to kickstart the project in May.
A further grant funding application for around £2.8 million is expected to be submitted once surveys have been carried out, according to the town council.
The council expects to appoint a contractor in early September.
