Grimm & Co's £1.5 million vision for "fairytale kingdom" in Rotherham town centre

GRIMM & Co founder Deborah Bullivant (pictured) has outlined her grand £1.5 million plan to reopen Talbot Lane Methodist Church as a “fairytale kingdom” for the literacy charity to fire even more children’s imaginations.

Trustees feel they have outgrown their base at the bottom of Doncaster Gate and want to make the switch to the 258-year-old church across from the Town Hall.

Large-scale expansion plans would give Grimm & Co — whose innovative storytelling workshops are booked up for the rest of the year — scope to put on even more interactive sessions across three classrooms instead of one and expand their offer outside school hours.

The Grade II-listed church closed earlier this year due to dwindling congregation numbers and is up for sale for £255,000.

Grimm & Co’s proposed new HQ would recreate the “magical apothercary” gift shop of their current home, while adding a bookshop and cafe experience dubbed The Book and Broomstick and featuring its own “magical” menu.

It would also allow the charity to welcome families for activity sessions all year round, hold large fundraising events to help spread its reach even further and give the chance for new ideas such as a “wizardry school” to take flight.

A planning application went in to Rotherham Borough Council this week and a bid to the Arts Council for a £499,999 leg-up will be submitted today.

Talbot Lane’s official listing restricts what renovations can be made but Grimm & Co want to initially repair the roof and deal with damp, before moving on to add a new floor and lifts and start building a whole new world of wonder.

Plans drawn up by heritage specialists Halliday and Clark show curved walls, a large performance space and a dedicated spot for the beanstalk slide from the Doncaster Gate “apothecary to the magical”.

The church’s historic organ will be preserved and some pews retained to form quirky classroom seating.

Deborah told the Advertiser the small size of the Doncaster Gate shop-cum-story centre, which opened in 2016, was beginning to stifle Grimm & Co’s potential.

“It has been a great success but we want to do a lot more,” she said.

“I’ve not even marketed our workshops to schools because there is already so much demand. I feel bad as I have to turn schools away.

“The church is a real treasure. It’s like a fairytale castle and I’m excited about what we could do there —  we could really go to town.

“We also feel we would be doing a service if we kept it in community use.

“The apothecary is beautiful but has high costs to the charity in maintenance and rent and is limited in space.

“It has provided an excellent springboard but doesn’t help us to raise much needed-funds for the charity.  

“We also need safer drop off points for children and ideally parking for customers and families.

“We’d like to create a fairy tale kingdom that hosts children’s parties, an entertaining family café and much, much more.”

Asked to sum up the concept behind the new centre, Deborah said a combination of the world of Terry Pratchett’s books and Disneyland wouldn’t be far wide of the mark, while the The Book and Broomstick aims to fuse the genteel charm of Betty’s Tea Rooms with the quirky feel of Barter Books, Northumberland’s legendary temple to reading.

“Of course, the beanstalk will be coming with us,” said Deborah, “and there will be more than one ‘secret door’ (the existing one gives children access to Grimm & Co’s first-floor learning centre).

“The café and especially the independent bookshop, which is something we don’t have in the town centre, would make it more of a destination than just a shop, but you’ll still be able to buy all our apothecary supplies and other products in the same way you can.

“We still want the Grimm & Co charm to go all the way through the place. 

“We’d love to have special days catering to the older generation where we can play 40s music and make it a place they look forward to going to.

“It will also allow us to work with families of younger children so we can include those aged nought to seven.

“But what I’m most excited about is the school of wizardry!”

Appropriately enough for an organisation with its feet planted firmly in the magical realm, Grimm and Co will find out on Hallowe’en if their bid has been successful.

If the thumbs-up is given, the aim is to start work straight afterwards and have the new centre ready for next year’s summer holidays.

“The congregation leaving the church may be fed-up about leaving but hopefully it would be a positive if it was kept in community use,” said Deborah.

“This would be a great place for Rotherham families to come but we want people to come from far and wide, too.

“We are already putting Rotherham on the map for the right reasons but we want to do even more.”