Salford City Council have sold the city’s former Coroner’s Courts at Pendleton House for over half a million pounds.
Salford real estate firm Endeavour Strategic Consulting Ltd, based on the Crescent, agreed to purchased the iconic building on Broughton Road for a minimum of £550,000.
The deal comes with an exclusivity period of three months for the firm to prepare proposals for what it wants to do with Pendleton House, which is understood to be to turn it into flats.
This imposing building has a distinguished history: it opened in 1936 as a Public Assistance Office offering relief for the poor and unemployed – only a couple of years after Salford author Walter Greenwood published ‘Love on the Dole’.
The grand set-up inside includes an sweeping staircase leading to a galleried landing with several larger rooms including the oak-pannelled former Coroner’s courtroom.
The council put the 14,000sq ft building up for sale in September 2014 as a way to generate extra revenue in the face of huge budget cuts.
SalfordOnline.com visited in February 2013 when filming a feature on the Salford Talking Newspaper for the Blind, which was headquartered there, and the building had indeed seen better days with plaster crumbling on the walls and cracked skylights.
It closed as a Coroner’s Court in 2005, with the service moving to Bolton town centre.
Since then has been used as office space.
Endeavour have the building on a 250-year leasehold at a ground rent of £1.
