Exeter Community Centre Trust, the charitable trust of local people which has owned the building since 2010, raised £1.6 million in grants and loans to begin the process of refurbishing the building as a community hub to welcome residents and groups from Exeter and beyond. Despite good professional advice, the initial demolitions of some of the interior walls to improve accessibility in the building (often called a ‘rabbit warren’ by those who lost themselves in its corridors) uncovered structural horrors.
The Georgian merchant’s house which forms the central core of the building had been built on extensively over the decades as the original School for the Blind grew. Some parts of the building had no firm foundations, some of the walls and floors needed structural underpinning.
The Trust raised £250,000 more and ‘re-engineered’ the design of the interior to make these structural alterations. But the planned refurbishment of the top floor of the building had to be ‘mothballed’ due to lack of funds.
The Trustees took on the challenge of what became ‘Our Big Project’ – to raise another £1 million in grants to complete the capital works to the top floor and to run a two year community engagement project to bring people back into the building, to learn about its heritage and history and its place in the St David’s Neighbourhood.
