ONE of Charles Rennie Mackintosh's most famous creations, the Willow Tea Rooms in Glasgow, has had its future secured after being bought by a charitable trust.
The new Celia Sinclair Charitable Trust has acquired the Category-A listed building for about £400,000. The building, which needs about £900,000 of further repairs, will be gifted to the city by the Trust.
The Mackintosh-designed building and interiors, which were designed and built in 1903 for Kate Cranston, are situated in Sauchiehall Street. The Willow Tea Rooms opened in November 1904 with the Room de Luxe as its main attraction, featuring silver furniture and leaded mirror friezes.
Mackintosh had complete control over every design in the property, including the cutlery and waitress dresses.
Ms Sinclair said: "The Willow Tea Rooms is an iconic building and I couldn't simply stand by and watch it deteriorate. I'm a proud Glaswegian and I want to see its heritage preserved for the generations to come.
"I started this project over a year ago. The recent tragic fire at the Glasgow School of Art has underlined to me, and others, that we really do need to act to safeguard what remains of Mackintosh's work.
"The Trust will ensure that after the renovation work the building will be financially secure and that due care and attention will be given to the building forever."
Work to make the building wind and watertight will require a minimum investment of more than £400,000.
In addition, the restoration work on features lost of damaged will cost at least another £500,000.
Anne Mulhern, who has run the Willow Tea Rooms restaurant since 1983, said: "After years of uncertainty I am relieved that we now have ownership back in Glasgow with someone who obviously cares about the building and will make sure that Mackintosh remains open for business in the city."
Work on revamping the building is due to get underway next year.
Its name comes from Sauchiehall Street, on which it is situated, which in Gaelic means "alley of the willows".
A leading Mackintosh expert, Roger Billcliffe, has agreed to join the board of the new charitable trust.
He said: "I am delighted to be joining the board as I believe that there is so much we need to protect and recover and Celia has the drive to make it happen."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article