TIME TO ACT ON CABMEN'S SHELTER
Published by the Society in the Ripon Gazette, 22nd February 2008
.jpg) | |
| Cabmen's Shelter and obelisk | |
 | .jpg) |
| Cabmen's Shelter - end view | Cabmen's Shelter - corner view |
.jpg) | .jpg) |
| Cabmen's shelter - detail, showing damage | Cabmen's Shelter - makers' plate |
Nine years ago Ripon Civic Society presented the shelter to Ripon City Council. The Council, accepting the gift to the city, formally undertook to look after the structure. That undertaking has not been fulfilled. The shelter is now rapidly becoming dilapidated, with flaking paintwork, damage to the woodwork and missing sections of the ornate cast-iron gallery below the roof.
The Cabmen’s Shelter is important. It was bought in 1911with a £200 legacy from Sarah Carter; her will specified that the sum was to provide a Shelter for cabmen waiting for fares on Ripon’s Market Square. In its early days it must have been well used; it may have housed a stove and even cooking equipment.
Very few such shelters survive. There are 13 in London, all Grade II listed buildings. There are others in Hitchin and in Ipswich. In the north of England they are quite rare - there is one at Embsay station and one on the West Stray in Harrogate – the latter was used as a soup kitchen in the hard winter of 1906.
Ripon’s Cabmen’s Shelter was built in 1911by Boulton and Paul of Norwich in 1911, iron founders and constructors of prefabricated wooden buildings – they produced the huts for Scott's Antarctic expedition. When modern motor taxis did away with the need for a shelter it fell into disrepair. Local councillor Rowland Simpson bought it in 1980 and donated it to Ripon Civic Society. The Royal Engineers restored it and fitted the wheeled steel chassis. Ten years later it was damaged by a lorry. Members of Ripon Civic Society spent more than £2,000 repairing the damage and repainting the Shelter over several months before presenting it to the City Council.
It was used for a while as a meeting point for local walking tours and as a place to display tour leaflets. This was never a satisfactory arrangement; at weekends, when it would have been most useful, it was never open. Nor did the unpainted boards at some of the windows help its look. The Shelter is now permanently locked.
The Civic Society has written to the council to ask that urgent action be taken to restore the Shelter. It has also sent a detailed description of the structure to English Heritage asking for it to be given Listed Building status. The Society hopes that restoration will be carried out before 11 April, when Simon Thurley, the Chief Executive of English Heritage, will be in the city to give the Civic Society’s 40th Anniversary Lecture, called ‘Goodbye Old England – does anyone out there care?’ at Holy Trinity Church. And, in the meantime, it will work with other interested parties to find a sensible and permanent use for this distinctive building.
