Places

Already used as a film location

For over 100 years the Monastery of St Francis was home to practising Catholics in Manchester and it played a very important part of the local community, with schools, clubs, church and community activities.

Victorian architect Edward Welby Pugin was engaged by the Franciscan Friars to design the Church and Friary and the building is considered one of Pugin's masterpieces.

But the displacement of generations of people in the 1970s to council estates around Manchester had a devastating impact on the congregation and the final mass was held at the Monastery in 1989.

It was sold to developers back in 1990 for conversion into flats. But boarded up and neglected, the building was vandalised and stripped of some of its valuable artefacts. Many statues were recovered after being put up for auction as garden ornaments!

Altar panel

Then in 1996, after just over a decade of neglect, the ‘Monastery of St Francis & Gorton Trust’ took over ownership of ‘Gorton Monastery’ from the receivers. They even succeeded in getting the Monastery included on the World Heritage list of 100 most endangered sites.. and it soon became known as Manchester's Taj Mahal.

Campaigners have been working for almost a decade to raise the £6m needed. But to qualify for Lottery funding, they also had to prove the restored buildings would be well used before the Lottery Fund would release the grant.

"We are here today to celebrate this fantastic news that we have got enough money now to start this restoration. The scaffoding is going up and we now know that Gorton Monastery is saved. And that it's going to be open to the public once again in 2007."

And she thanked all the volunteers and the people of Gorton who had helped to keep the dream alive:

"It's taken nearly ten years - I don't think we'd have been brave enough to start if we'd known it was going to take so long - but certainly now the regeneration of Gorton can start on the back of this beautiful building.

Disrepair: a crumbling angel

"There were times when we never thought this day would come but it's really exciting and it's so lovely now that we can be assured that this building is going to be used and saved and can be an asset to Manchester once again."

The Monastery is already earning its keep as a film location and when it's completed, the building will be used to host conferences, exhibitions, community events and even weddings.

The project has been supported by major grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund, English Heritage and the Architectural Heritage Fund.