Thursday, January 26, 2023

Church hall for sale in Market Harborough


The church hall at St Hugh's in Granville Street, Market Harborough, is on the market for £215,000 and "suitable for a variety of commercial, community and residential uses".

Its sale must be connected with plans to adapt the church itself for more community use.

I took these photos of it this lunchtime. St Hugh's began as one of those flatpack 'tin tabernacle', which means that the hall used to be more substantial than the church.

You can read about how practical these corrugated iron churches were for worship in another Liberal England post about St Hugh's.

The tin tabernacle served here until the main church opened in 1940. The space it occupied is still vacant, and I was chatting to someone who remembered having judo lessons inside it in 1970. It would be interesting to know when it was taken away.

I'd like to see a coffee shop here, for purely selfish reasons, but it may be a bit far from the town centre for that.

Mind you, the property market in Granville Street can be unpredictable, for it was the site of Market Harborough's Great Bungalow Mystery.

You may recall that the council paid £920,000 with an estimated value of £303,000. Conservative-run Harborough District Council commissioned a report into the affair and then refused to publish it.

The council even made it into Private Eye last summer because of it.



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