Historic mansion to house holiday lets and shops

A 15th Century merchant's house is set to be transformed into a tourism centre, shops, and small holiday lets.

Llwyd Mansion, which is Grade I-listed, was bought by Oswestry Town Council in 2023, after it had fallen into disrepair.

The authority was given nearly half-a-million pounds in grant money to carry out urgent structural repairs. It is now due to apply for a full grant of nearly £3m, under the Framing the Future Project.

"We think that it was built as a substantial merchant house, and we think that it might be linked possibly to the wool trade - because we know Oswestry was a real hub of the wool trade in the medieval period," said project manager Samantha Jones.

It is hoped the work will remove it from the UK's Heritage at Risk register.

The project will see community and commercial spaces created on the lower floors, with holiday accommodation on the upper floors.

On the holiday lets, Ms Jones said: "We know that we're not going to make money off Lwydd Mansion, but what we need to do is earn a little bit of a return to cover the costs of maintaining the building, going forward."

Oswestry town clerk Arren Roberts, said safety was a priority that was considered.

"One of the things we need to make sure is about fire safety - it's a timber frame building," he explained.

"One of the options that we're looking at is to have accommodation on the top floor so we need to make sure people are safe in the building."

The team also plans to relocate the tourist information centre into the building.

"We're going to work with local artisans... to create some really high quality bespoke items that we can sell that have Llwyd Mansion as the inspiration," said Ms Jones.

"We've got a conservation architect team on board and they'll be helping to advise us on what we do to restore the building.

"It's really important not to just to do the restoration project but that we maintain it for the future."

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