It was 11 years ago when Ian Harrabin, a property developer from Coventry, saw the city’s Charterhouse had been put up for sale. Dating from 1381, it is the only Carthusian monastery in the country with surviving interiors, and had been used as college classrooms for decades.
“It was almost unknown in the city. It was gifted to the people of Coventry in 1940, but the general public didn’t know about it,” said Harrabin. “There is something very special about the place, the painting has been described as the best piece of medieval art outside of Westminster Abbey.”
He pulled together a team of local residents, and they decided to intervene to prevent it from being sold for commercial use. A decade later, after raising about £10m to restore the Grade I-listed building, it is finally opening to the public next week as a visitor attraction.
It will feature three floors of immersive storytelling about the building’s history, while the surrounding gardens have been restored, along with the medieval and Elizabethan paintings, which had been covered in plastic, and the site will also host a restaurant from Glynn Purnell, the chef-patron of Michelin-starred Purnell’s in Birmingham.
“The building had been gifted to the people, the city, and we thought we should do what we could to make that happen, to bring it back to life,” Harrabin said. “It’s been a long road to raise the funds and restore what is one of the finest medieval buildings in the city.”
But Harrabin’s decision to save the Charterhouse was only the start of the journey that led to the creation of the Historic Coventry Trust, now heralded as a national model for saving old buildings.
In a unique deal with the city council, the trust has taken guardianship of many of Coventry’s historic buildings that did not have an economic purpose and has overseen their restoration.
As a result of their work, visitors can now stay in two of the city’s historical gatehouses, as well as a row of 15th-century timber-framed cottages.
They have turned London Road cemetery, an early example of the 19th-century “garden cemetery” movement, into a visitor attraction with regular events, as well as leading the restoration of Drapers’ Hall into a music venue. The historical hall, once used as an air raid shelter during the Blitz, was closed for over 30 years before its £5m refurbishment.
“There are so many unused historic buildings in the city and I came up with this plan to make the whole lot sustainable if we brought in beneficial but commercial and income-generating uses to some buildings,” Harrabin said.
“We seem to be very much a leader on how to make the sector economically self-sustaining and I think other heritage charities are starting to take on board what we’re doing.”
He likened their work to a “mini-National Trust” that he said would help boost the visitor economy in Coventry, off the back of its year as city of culture.
“People want to see these buildings brought back, the feedback we get from the people of the city is immense,” said Harrabin. “There is a huge amount of public wellbeing and civic pride that makes a big impact on the city and I think the landscape we have here, and the heritage, is a big part of that.
“But we want people to learn lessons from what we’ve done here and actually do the same in other places, because the people want it.”
The Charterhouse opens to the public on 1 April.
