Cottage pushing up the daisies

RUN-DOWN state . . . Hencote Cottage

Crime Lake tea room plan ‘dead in the water’

AN historic Daisy Nook cottage which was vandalised and left to rot is being handed back to the National Trust.

In 2001, Oldham Council took on a lease for Hencote Cottage at Crime Lake, which included maintaining it and its grounds.

But the property, which was built in the 1800s and is a listed building owned by the trust, has been unoccupied and neglected for 10 years.

It suffered repeated vandalism and by last year the doors and windows were smashed and roof stripped.

For 45 years until 1999, it was lived in by the Tucker family including the late Charles Tucker, a former Failsworth councillor and the trust’s Daisy Nook park warden, who died in 1994.

It was also a tea room, craft centre and trust information point.

Oldham Council’s plans to use the empty cottage as a visitor centre for people with learning difficulties were at odds with the trust’s rule that it must be used as a home.

Though a council worker lived in the cottage for a short time, it stayed empty for years. The trust threatened to carry out the work and pass the bill to the council last year.

Now the council has decided to negotiate with the trust, carry out its own repairs and surrender the lease. The money will come from the council’s £6million asset management fund.

Cabinet member for regeneration, Councillor John McCann, said: “The National Trust wanted it to be residential but we don’t have a residential use for it. We have no need for it.

“We have agreed in negotiations with the National Trust to repair it, and hope it will revert back to them and save money on leasing costs.”

But Labour leader and Failsworth Councillor Jim McMahon, is disappointed. He said: “This could have been a fantastic community facility but rather than putting energy into the project the council thinks it better to spend thousands of pounds repairing the building only for it to be transferred back to the National Trust.”