I was born and grew up in Bradford, Yorkshire. At one time, to get to where my parents lived from the City Centre I would walk up Church Bank, past the Cathedral and past the Old Paper Hall, which fascinated me.
It had a date carved over the door – 1648 – and was falling to pieces.
The building had been boarded up, but the place was being vandalized and the boarding had been broken in places. I didn’t go inside as the roof looked very dodgy, but I did peer through the gaps and could see what looked like old wooden panelling. I took some pics. of the exterior which show the state of decrepitude it was in at the time
I tried to find out about it, but couldn’t find much. I also brought it to the attention of Bradford City Council, asking why it was being let go to ruin. I didn’t get an answer!
Life moved on – I’d gone away to University and my parents, on retirement, had gone home to Ireland.
Now and then, I wondered about the Old Paper Hall and presumed it had either been flattened to make way for the development which was going on in that part of Bradford, or was still mouldering away.
Recently, I was watching ‘Antiques Roadshow’ which was being filmed at a mansion where the man who owned it had bought a lot of wooden panelling from places that were being pulled down. This reminded me to the Old Paper Hall.
Life has moved on, and it’s now possible to Google just about anything. So I Googled, and found a Wikipedia entry for the Paper Hall….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_Hall And also found that the Hall has been renovated and is being used as offices! I’m not keen on the inside, which has lost most of its original features, but the outside looks very good, and it’s better than the place falling to bits or being bulldozed…..
https://www.eddisons.com/property-search/the-paper-hall-anne-gate-bradford-bd1-4eq
And now to the point – if that can be done with the wreck of a place the Old Paper Hall had become, it can be done with Clestrain….
https://theorkneynews.scot/?s=Clestrain+Bernie+Bell
Hopefully more sympathetically!
To me – there are comparisons which bring hope for the restoration of Clestrain.
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