A long-empty Victorian library will have a new lease of life after councillors approved a £15.7 million plan to build 102 homes on the site.
The former Hyde Library, off Union Street, closed a decade ago with its services moving into Hyde Town Hall, but will now become a four-storey apartment building after Tameside Council’s planning committee voted to greenlight the scheme.
Developers, Hyde Court Ltd, will keep the original red brick facade, but have a remodelled interior space to include 53 flats.
They will also build two neighbouring blocks containing 34 and 15 homes, respectively, although the proposals don’t include any affordable housing due to the costs of fixing the library, which a Tameside Council report described as “rapidly deteriorating”.
The building is no longer watertight thanks to its roof leaking in multiple places and causing serious water damage.
The project will have parking space for 101 bicycles and 72 cars.
“The building’s interior is sadly beyond saving, but this scheme ensures its character lives on,” said Hyde Werneth councillor Phil Chadwick.
“It’s a chance to turn a long-standing eyesore into something Hyde can be proud of.”
Built from 1897 to 1899 to designs from architects Woodhouse & Willoughby – who specialised in the construction of churches and schools but also made Mr Thomas’s Chop House in Manchester – it was originally Hyde Technical School and Free Library and is on the site of a former reservoir.
Despite being seen as a ‘heritage asset’, the library is not a listed building due, in part, to the number of them built following the Libraries Act of 1892.
A heritage report describes Hyde Library as being: “[A]lthough distinguished by competent terracotta work, the library is an otherwise unremarkable example of the free Renaissance style, which is not of the same quality as some of Woodhouse & Willoughby’s other work.”
The developer expects work to take two-and-a-half years to complete.
