After Dark could be listed as vital part of Reading history

The After Dark Club. Credit: getreading

A nightclub in Reading at risk of being turned into flats could be protected as an asset of the town's history.

Councillor Karen Rowland has revealed she and Evelyn Williams of the Reading Conservation Area Advisory Committee (CAAC) are looking at options to keep the under-threat After Dark club in community use.

Cllr Rowland, who won the Abbey seat for Labour at the Reading Borough Council elections on Friday, May 4, is hoping to hit the ground running by embracing the history club.

Before she was elected Cllr Rowland was due to fight plans to demolish the club during a meeting of the council's planning committee on Wednesday, April 25.

Developers have twice applied for permission to flatten the building in London Street and replace it with flats. The first time the plans were rejected and on the second occasion they were withdrawn before councillors got a chance to discuss them after officers raised a number of concerns about the size and design of the plan.

Cllr Rowland is now urging the building's owner to take a different approach, having seen two plans to convert it to housing now fail.

Cllr Rowland says the club in Reading, Berkshire, is in an extremely difficult location to develop as it flanked by two listed buildings and on the edge of a conservation area.

She said: "The site has had a long history, since 1800, as being used for one organisation or another as a site for the community to gather, serving at various times as the YMCA, church group hall, and more recently as the After Dark venue.

"We (CAAC) were going to propose that the wider community possibly work to list the club as an Asset of Community Value (ACV) as it is that for many.

"The club is a unique part of Reading's more modern collective history, which is nonetheless history, and there is value to the community in that use and also as part of the remaining historical character of that area which has been eroded in recent years.

"ACVs are something that Historic England is currently pushing as a way to 'save' pubs, community centres and places of 'value' to the community."

Cllr Rowland said she would support the CAAC's suggestions for uses for the building other than for housing.

The area is part of the old Huntley Boorne and Stevens Tin Works factory in London Street and there are protected parts of the building, including one of its outer walls.

The club is at 112 London Street, and 110 and 114 are already listed buildings.

The club's managers recently revealed they are exploring ways to turn it in to more of a community asset to expand what is offers to the town.