The Retreat commits to public consultation
'The developers are promising extensive public consultation with the local community, heritage organisations and local interest groups.'
The Quaker-founded mental health institute The Retreat, York, has agreed a formal contract on the sale of its forty-acre Heslington Road site to developers the PJ Livesey Group.
The PJ Livesey Group has said that it is committed to involving the newly-formed Heritage Group – which involves some Friends – throughout the process to help understand the best way to preserve the site’s unique legacy. The developers are promising extensive public consultation with the local community, heritage organisations and local interest groups. The Heritage Group has representatives from a number of bodies who will advise PJ Livesey on the important historical elements of the site.
The Retreat told the Friend that PJ Livesey has written to ward councillors and to Acomb, Friargate, Harrogate, New Earswick and Thirsk Quaker Meetings ‘to reassure them on the preservation and continued open access to the grounds’.
James Woodmansee, development director with PJ Livesey, said: ‘We are hugely respectful of the Quaker history at The Retreat and we are already in discussions with a newly-formed Heritage Group on how best to be able to record and celebrate that legacy.’
‘We hope to be able to convert the Grade II listed buildings into residential which will provide new homes while preserving their beautiful exterior while also strategically placing some new build houses, discreetly on the site. These will include some affordable homes.
‘The extensive grounds include a tennis court, a cricket pitch and bowling green which are currently rarely used and we hope to speak to local clubs and groups about their future use.
‘The orchard and daffodil meadow will remain and we would hope to retain the spirit of The Retreat which offered a place of calm restoration with the creation of a peace and tranquillity garden which would be open to all.’
Peter Livesey, founder and managing director of the Manchester-based company, said: ‘The Heslington Road site is hugely important, both architecturally and socially and we will bring all our expertise and passion to this project working with the Quakers, the community and heritage experts to secure its future.’
David Robson, clerk and chair of the Retreat Board, said: ‘We are delighted to have agreed to transfer this historical Quaker asset to the care of PJ Livesey and have been excited by their vision of what the site may become.
‘We are confident that the historical heritage and legacy of the site will be retained, and perhaps enhanced and will support the process for achieving these plans to be outlined by PJ Livesey over the coming year.’
The first informal public consultation events are expected to be held on site next month. The sale is conditional on a successful planning application.
The Retreat offered pioneering psychiatric care when it was opened by the Religious Society of Friends in 1796. It closed to in-patients in 2018.
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