Photography: Sarah Grice
Burberry has ditched its ambitious plans to turn the Grade I-listed Temple Works in Yorkshire into its new UK manufacturing centre.
The British fashion brand had enlisted Stanton Williams Architects to revive the industrial behemoth – which was top of the Victorian Society’s endangered list in 2011 – but those plans have now been scrapped as the company seeks to potentially redevelop another plot of land in the city’s South Bank.
‘We have decided not to push ahead with the Temple Works building. We have let the option lapse,’ said Julie Brown, Burberry’s chief financial officer.
Temple Works flax mill was built in Leeds by Joseph and Ignatius Bonomi the younger, and engineer James Combe between 1836 and 1840 for industrialist John Marshall, a keen Egyptologist. It borrowed elements from the Typhonium at Dendera – including an obelisk-style chimney, which was replaced in 1852.
The mill’s office and former counting house has 18 full-height windows and pillars, and was said to be inspired by the Temple of Horus at Edfu.
Plans were mooted in 2014 to turn the mill into an arts venue, and Burberry announced in 2015 it would be reviving the structure as part of its new £50 million facility, which would have employed 1,000 people.
Now that those plans have been shelved, the future of the mill is once again uncertain.
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