Let us make safe and save, The Tithebarn

Preston City Council announced plans to demolish the Tithebarn.

No consultation. No shared evidence. No proper conversation with the community. Just demolition.

We were gutted. This building has stood for centuries. It has seen Preston through guilds, strikes, wars and celebrations. It is part of the fabric of our city. Now it risks being flattened without so much as a fair shot at saving it.

But were are not giving up that easy.

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Our Proposal

We are Preserving Preston’s Heritage Community Interest Company. We have put months into a plan to bring the Tithebarn back to life as a people’s history centre. Not a museum locked in the past, but a living space for learning, stories, exhibitions, creativity and pride.

We are not asking for council money. Just the building. Just the chance.

We have shared with the council an alternative future and we will soon share our full business plan with our followers in this group. This plan is comprehensive and contains the phases, the funding, the team, the risks, and the future. We’ve shown it can work. We’ve shown there is community support. And we’ve shown this is a better deal for the public purse than knocking it down.

Please read it. Share it. And stand with us if you want Preston to hold on to what makes it Preston.

This is not just about one building. It’s about whether local people ever get a say in the future of their own city.

We are still here. We are still ready. And we are still fighting.

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PRESERVING PRESTON’S HERITAGE
COMMUNITY INTEREST COMPANY (CIC)

There is a building sat quietly at the edge of the city centre. You will have walked past it. You might not even have noticed it. It does not shout. It is not flashy. It is just stood there watching Preston change around it. The Tithebarn. It is old. Probably one of the oldest buildings still left in the centre. It is not been a fancy building in its time – not a stately home or a seat of power. But it has been something much more important than that. It has been a gathering place, a place of trade, of laughter, of organising, of celebration and solidarity. It has been a pub, a music hall, a trades’ council HQ, a place where people started walks, rode boundaries, debated, cheered and came together.

Now it is in danger. The city is looking at knocking it down. The land around it is changing, and the building stands in the way of a version of the future that forgets where we have come from.

We are here to ask you to give that future a better shot. A future with roots, one with purpose.

One that says Preston’s story matters, and invites you to tell your own.

We are Preserving Preston’s Heritage Community Interest Company. We are not a big shiny trust or a distant developer. We are a group of people who live here, work here, care deeply and

want to make something real for this city. We have a vision to bring the Tithebarn back to life! Not as a pub but as a people’s history museum for Preston and not as a pastiche or a static museum, but

as a living, breathing heritage space. A people’s history centre for Preston. A place that does justice to the stories that made this city what it is. A place that does not just tell you about the past, but

makes it a resource for our present and future.

This business plan sets out what we want to do. We are not asking for money from Preston City Council. We are asking for the building. Either through a long lease of 999 years at a Peppercorn rent or a community asset transfer of the freehold. We understand this is a big ask. But we also know what the alternative is. Demolition costs. A site flattened and fenced off. A piece of

the city lost forever. We believe that we can take the burden off your hands, bring in funding, bring in people, and make the Tithebarn into something to be proud of.

We want to be very clear. If we are given this chance and we cannot raise the funds or make it work, we will step aside. We will not stand in the way of what needs to happen next. But if we are

not even given the opportunity to try, we will fight for this building. We will shout about what is being lost and why it matters.

The cost of demolition, plus making good the site, is likely to be in the region of £150,000 to £200,000. There’s also a listed building right next door. Nobody seems to know what the relationship is between the two, and taking one down could lead to stabilisation work for the other being required. That could push costs even higher. And that is public money. So we are asking you to consider a different way forward. One that saves Preston something unique and turns a liability into a community-led asset, while producing a considerable saving to the public purse.

We’re proposing that the council provide us with the recent surveys as a matter of urgency.
Among our group PPH, there are a number of build professionals – architects, building surveyors, heritage building experts who can assess the surveys and from which we can draw our own conclusions. If we decide that we see potential in taking this forward we ask that the building is scaffolded, so we can investigate further and assess viability. This scaffold would be required even if the building is demolished. We ask just for a short time period in order to assess viability. If we think this is going concern then we propose we take forward the asset transfer. This process can begin with the agreement of all parties prior to even the end of the planning process for demolition and the process of taking away the liability from the council can begin.

We have identified the Architectural Heritage Fund in order to get some initial funding, plus early stage funding for emergency repairs from Spacehive and Lancashire County Council. These will pay for surveys, plans, and early emergency works to make the building watertight and secure. Then we go after the larger grants. We draw up the programme and we open the doors – bit-by-bit – to

people. Because it is the people who have always been at the heart of this.

This heritage centre will not be just about old objects in cabinets. It will be a working place.

A place to learn, explore and understand Preston’s past. We will work with organisations like Lancashire Museum Services, The Harris, Lancashire Archives, Uclan Temperance Archives, private

collectors, community groups and the Friends of Edith Rigby to give a proper home to stories that deserve space. We will give young people routes into creative work. We will run exhibitions,

workshops, lectures, performances and tours. We will do this with a strong community team around us, using our existing networks and building new ones.

The team behind this project is full of people with the passion, skills and experience to get it done. From architectural consultancy to award-winning creative producers, from historians to community organisers. We are real people who know what delivering locally looks like. We have worked in complex buildings, on grassroots campaigns, and in spaces where culture and community meet. We have strong relationships in the city and beyond, and we are building Preserving Preston Heritage Community Interest Company with the right governance and structure to take this forward responsibly and professionally.

This business plan gives you the details :-

The phases.

The funding.

The team.

The risks.

The strategy.

The heart of it is simple. This is Preston. We believe in it. We believe in its stories.

We want to make sure the next generation has somewhere to hear them, to share their own, and to shape what comes next. We are not building a monument. We are building a living place. A place

where past and future meet a place to honour the heritage of our people and our past in a way that shapes our future.

Let us not lose the last building standing from a lost part of the city. Let us give it back to the people who will make it sing again.

We are ready. Are you?

Preserving Preston’s Heritage CIC

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