New Bradford church - a behind the scenes look

Once packed with revellers, the former Glydegate Square complex which was home to clubs including Walkabout, Revolution and Tequila, now stands a shadow of what it once was.

The church has a vision of hope for the building

While its days as a nightspot are long gone, work is now underway to transform it into a new £4.6 million city centre church following plans revealed by the Anglican Diocese of Leeds earlier this year.

It will be called Fountains Church - named after the iconic City Park fountains.

The Telegraph & Argus was given a tour of the building - next to the Alhambra and the Bradford Cenotaph - and these pictures show the scale of the work needed to bring it back into use.

Since it has been vacant, it has fallen victim to vandalism and the scourge of drugs is hard to ignore. As these images show, used needles and other drug paraphernalia litter surfaces throughout the building.

The remnants of drug taking

It’s a tall task, but those working to transform the building are fired up by what it can become. They’re galvanised by the hope that in the future they can help those people who once used the building as a place to take drugs - a poignant vision for the building’s re-use and regeneration.

Reverend Linda Maslen, Minister at Fountains Church, said: “As we look at every needle that has been dropped in here, every drug capsule that’s been left behind, every empty alcohol bottle - those represent people’s lives that are in ruins.

“We know through our previous experience that for a lot of people, as they journey away from the chaos of drugs and drink, then actually faith becomes a really important thing.

“You look at things like Alcoholic Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous - they all have this sense of higher power.

“The higher power we believe in of course is God - as people begin to find God then actually their lives can be really significantly transformed.”

Speaking about the current state of the building, Nathan Hughes, from Mac Consulting, said: “It’s a sorry state, it’s not looking very well. It has clearly been misused for a couple of years now.

The building is being cleared

“The condition of the internal fixtures and fittings - everything will have to come out. The mechanical electrical installations, we were hoping to reuse at least some of them, but unfortunately that’s not going to be possible.

“It’s a complete gut out and go again, which I don’t think is a bad thing.”

He added: “In terms of value, size of building, it’s not particularly large. In terms of the complexity of it, it’s been a challenge to date.

“We’ve had to secure the property, the clearance is ongoing and everything will start to pick up pace once we get it clear, once we can get the detailed surveys done, it should be just like any other project.

“Originally we were looking at a couple of weeks to get the building clear, the more and more we go into it, the more and more issues we find.

“Concealed needles and that sort of thing. That process can’t be rushed and until we clear everything of hazardous waste and needles, we can’t move all of the big stuff.”

It’s hoped the church will be open - in some way - for worship by June next year.

“We’re really tasked with creating, building a church, which is in of and for Bradford,” said Rev Maslen.

“So, looking at the different communities that there around and about the city centre, thinking about how we can serve them, begin to share with them our faith and hopefully see them coming into a relationship with Jesus.

“It’s a really massive building and we’re not completely sure what we’re going to do with all of it just yet.

This area will become a worship space

“Stage one will be to create, within the ground level, a worship space for around 200 people.

“A space that can be used for other activities as well - not creating a church with pews in it, but creating an open space where we can do other communal activities - and a cafe which we hope will be a ‘pay as you’re able’ cafe and a social enterprise which will enable people to get their feet on to the job market, get used to perhaps initially volunteering and then, if they’re capable of volunteering, get them into some paid employment.”

The idea for the church has been a couple of years in the making and stemmed from the feeling there was space for a city centre church.

Rev Maslen said: “The stats for people attending church in Bradford are really very low.

“Obviously, part of that is because we’re a very multi-faith place, but also we recognise there are significant demographics of people that are really missing from the church at the moment, particularly those in the kind of 18 to 40 age range.

“We started to think ‘what can we do, how can we begin to reach those people’. As the Church of England hasn’t got any real city centre presence, we wanted somewhere in the city centre.

“This building was up for sale, it was kind of a bit bigger than I think any of us had anticipated we might go for.

“But that gives us the opportunity, not only to be able to do worship and to have worship spaces and services as any normal church might, but also to be able to expand perhaps some of the other social activities that churches are really well known for.”

The building won’t be completely finished by June and it’s likely there’ll need to be some “significant fundraising” to progress.

The state of the building has meant it has been difficult to get proper quotations for work.

“The first thing that’s having to be done before we can even know the kind of size and scale of what we need to raise is for it to be cleared of all the needles and human debris,” said Rev Maslen.

And the vision for the future?

“Our hope is that this place will be brimming full of people,” she added.

“People of faith, people of different faiths, so lots of things going on, lots of activities during the week.

“Definitely not a Sunday-only church, but a church that is operating maybe even 24/7.”