IT is good to see that people are beginning to wake up and take the future of Grange Court seriously. The building is Leominster’s nationally famous former market hall, built by king’s carpenter John Abel in 1633 and is grade II listed.

Apart from a few who would object to any change of any kind, I think most of us wish the building well and want it to continue thriving for centuries to come.

That means some changes must happen.

The court is uninsulated, electrically heated, on seven levels and virtually inaccessible for the disabled.

Herefordshire Council, which owns it, has declared it surplus to requirements.

Without action, its future is bleak.

When first built, the market hall was one single splendid room raised on oak posts to give a covered market area below. When it was moved in 1855, the ground floor was bricked in and the first floor partitioned into two large rooms and two smaller spaces with a central stair. The Victorian work is unspectacular and rather unsympathetically carried out, but it is a record of a phase in the life of the building.

Much of the criticismof the current proposal concerns the removal of that stair, essential if the magnificent upper room is to be recreated. Whereas the remainder of the Victorian work on the ground floor, which includes the Mayor’s Parlour, is to be preserved intact, the stair had to go. It will be professionally recorded before demolition, a strategy that has been agreed by English Heritage.

Some people are concerned about the new offices proposed in the rear sunken garden. They are there to provide an income, so Grange Court can be financially self sufficient without relying on council handouts, and they have been designed to be almost invisible; only the rooflights will show above the yew hedge.

The prize for the people of Leominster is that John Abel’s amazing building will be more than just a superb setting for important events; we hope it will signify, as it once did, the essence and heart of Leominster as a community.

MARTIN BAINES, LARC Director, South Street, Leominster