Under-threat historic hospital handed £4.6m grant
Tyne and Wear Building Preservation TrustA historic former hospital building is to be restored and turned into affordable housing as part of a multimillion-pound scheme.
Newcastle's Keelman's Hospital was built in 1701 to provide food, shelter and medical care for poor people before it was later used as housing and student accommodation.
The Grade-II listed building closed in 2009 and has fallen into disrepair, but a £4.6m grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund means it will be given a new lease of life.
The organisation's northern director, Helen Featherstone, said the redevelopment would mean the Keelman's Hospital would remain a "historic bastion of the city's riverscape".
The grant was awarded to the Tyne and Wear Building Preservation Trust which will work with Newcastle City Council to create 20 apartments inside the building.
Trust chair Shona Alexander said the group was "committed to rescuing local historic buildings which are such a huge part of the region's unique heritage".
'Historically important'
The building is named after the keelmen of the River Tyne, who worked on flat-bottomed boats to carry coal from the banks of the river to ships.
The 1,600 keelmen paid for the hospital's construction by giving one penny a tide from the wages of each crew.
The building was converted in the 19th Century to tenement housing for the city's poor and then became accommodation to Newcastle Polytechnic College students in the mid-20th Century.
The hospital will be modernised with renewable energy technology as part of the redevelopment, but will keep its historic features such as its clock and turret.
During the works, the building will be turned into a "living classroom" where talks, scaffold tours and demonstrations will be carried out.
An oral history project will also take place to capture the post-war history of the building from former residents, while a partnership with The Glasshouse International Centre for Music will explore Geordie songs about keelmen.
Newcastle City Council leader Karen Kilgour said the building was one of the city's most "historically important buildings".
She said the funding would "restore it to its former glory and provide beautiful homes of distinction for the people of Newcastle".
