By Carmelo Garcia – Local Democracy Reporter
Gloucester History Festival’s spring weekend is unaffected by the City Council’s ongoing financial crisis and will be going ahead as planned.
The City Council announced last week that it would be relinquishing its lease for Blackfriars Priory, which is the venue for the popular history festival.
The site is owned by English Heritage but the council is giving up its lease for the site as part of its financial recovery plans.
“There’s no panic, the spring weekend is full steam ahead,” Richard Graham, co-chair of the Gloucester History Festival, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
He said whoever becomes the next lessee, it is Gloucester History Festival’s intention for the event to continue at Blackfriars.
“We don’t know who that might be, but in terms of the bigger picture they might bring in all sorts of exciting things to Blackfriars,” he said.
“If you’re a history festival regular, you love Blackfriars and know it well. But if you’re not and have not been to a wedding party there, there are a lot of people in the city who don’t know where it is.”
Mr Graham said in a social media post that the historic site was hardly ever open until the City Council leased it from English Heritage in 2009.
“[It was] an extraordinary waste of a precious heritage asset,” he said.
“I saw it as the obvious venue for a History Festival and the partnerships and teams formed have (in my biased view) created a History Festival second to none across the country.
“When I first hired Blackfriars in 2011 it was for £500 a day: now the Gloucester History Trust pays a huge multiple of that for our three day Spring Weekend and a ten day September Festival.
“Of course Blackfriars today – Wedding Venue of the Year in SW England – is much better known and commands a premium.
“The buildings are still unfinished business: the County Council completed the courtyard in 2010-11 and the Buttery is now re-open and in more buoyant times the inside of the West Wing and the green space beside could be developed as an amazing eating/drinking venue.
“But English Heritage has architectural treasures and minuscule revenue – we need a visionary with deep pockets to realise that dream.”