Preston-born and bred designer Ben Casey is seeking to take on a neglected part of the city and transform it into a new destination for food, drink, and entertainment.
Preston runs through Caseyâs blood. Brought up in Deepdaleâs terrace-lined streets, he was responsible for redesigning Preston North Endâs Deepdale Stadium and, against all odds, brought the National Football Museum to the city. Now, Ben has turned his attention to Market Street West. We went to find out more.
It’s a cold December afternoon, North End beat Blackburn 4-1 away, and Iâm waiting for Ben Casey in his Lost Bar and Pizzeria, tucked away on Market Street West, off Friargate. The cosy bar and pizzeria are bustling with groups of friends meeting for Christmas drinks. Previously known as Once Was Lost, the space was transformed by Benâs former business partners Jeremy and Rebecca Rowlands. The outdoor seating area is set around a beautiful cobbled courtyard, whilst inside there is the heated glass roofed conservatory and the former gift shop is now a seating area, which Ben later tells me will become the Dickens room, paying homage to the author of Hard Times. Charles Dickens visited Preston many times to deliver talks, the then mill town providing inspiration for the fictitious Victorian Coketown, as featured in the book.
Read more: Hard Times in Preston in 1861: squalor, poverty and disease
Ben arrives jubilant after North Endâs victory over Blackburn, delighted that the club has had a run of wins. Weâre sat in the snug seating area. Ben is keen to preserve the heritage of the buildings he has acquired for the project. The buildings that house Lost were once handweaversâ cottages, dating back to the 1700s, and Chain House Brewing is next door.
âThis part of Preston is historic,â Ben says. âIâm pleased to be able to restore this building and make it relevant for today. We love this feeling of unearthing the original features; you can see the exposed beams and the thick brick walls. At the front of the building you can see the run of the brickwork. Itâs really attractive and yet in a very prosaic way, you get a sense of its working, craft heritage. Once you knock these buildings down, you canât recreate them.â
The location of the building is important too. Market Street West runs off and behind the university end of Friargate, close to where the old Gatsby nightclub was located, in the hub of the student area.
âThis part of Preston celebrates independence,â says Ben, who has already started to support other local entrepreneurs. Lostâs Pizzaiolo is Charlie Kenworthy, who creates Neo-Neapolitan pizzas, freshly making the dough on site and leaving it to cold ferment for three days, giving the pizzas a lovely airy quality and patterned crust. He tops the pizzas with a range of high-quality ingredients.
âCharlie has been developing his pizzas and selling them at pop-ups. People love his authentic Neapolitan pizzas. His ambition was to have a pizzeria and I wanted to give him that opportunity,â says Ben.
Accessed through Lostâs courtyard is Chain House Brewing Company and Taproom. For the past five years, Ryan Hayes gained an excellent reputation for brewing his beers from his garage in Longton, before relocating his brewery into the building next to Lost.
Read more: New micro brewery and taproom opens off Friargate
âRyan is widely known and respected,â says Ben. âNow people can come and see where he brews his beers and drink them in the Taproom.â
Bens creative consultancy The Chase redesigned Chain House Brewing Companyâs marque, winning an international award in the process. When you walk into the Taproom, the distinctive marque adorns the brick wall like a ghost sign and the breweryâs huge vessels line the wall. The atmosphere in the modern, industrial brewery and taproom is warm and buoyant. Ryan is delighted to be busy with people trying out his American-style pale ales.
âWe launched here a week ago, and weâve been very busy,â says Ryan. âSome people were already familiar with Chain Houseâs beers but now they can come and see where theyâre brewed and drink from the source. Itâs been great to see lots of new faces.â
Ryan points out the beer board: âEvery beer is a new beer. We enjoy experimenting with different ingredients and weâve been receiving great feedback.â
The venues are surrounded by other independent businesses, or as Ben calls them âfriendly neighboursâ. Walk out of Lostâs cobbled courtyard and youâre on Claytonâs Gate, an alleyway that runs from Friargate to Market Street West. Here youâll find Bearâs Emporium leather shop and Alexander de Volâs ceramics workshop, which is also home to ceramicist Devon Johnson. Located close to Lost, is Plau Bar and Bistro, serving small plates and drinks in another historic venue that was transformed by Rebecca and Jeremy Rowlands. Itâs this spirit of independence in Preston which is important to Ben.
Read more: PLAU in Friargate relaunches with new management
âI describe Preston as a micro-city, rather than a small city, it has got the things you expect in a big city: excellent national transport connections, stunning architecture like the Bus Station and The Harris, beautiful city centre parks, a major university, but none of the urban sprawl of a big city,â says Ben. âBut what it lacks is an alternative district like Manchesterâs Northern Quarter or Shoreditch in London. So, what I would like to do, is take an unloved part of Preston and make it into a social and cultural destination.â
And that destination will be called Market Street Social. Lost Bar and Pizzeria and Chain House Brewing Company are the first two pieces of the puzzle. Ben has also acquired two more buildings, close to Prestonâs Playhouse on Market Street West, and has plans to incorporate further buildings in the project, creating spaces for eating, drinking, and live music and entertainment.
Read more: Indoor and outdoor food and drink hall planned for just off Friargate
They are exciting and ambitious plans but there is no doubt that Ben will see them through, for this is the man who was key to the redesign of Deepdale Stadium.
âWhen Manchester put in for the 2000 Olympic bid in the early 90s I started researching football grounds, as my company The Chase was briefed to send out architectural packages to companies if Manchester won the bid. It was around the time of Italia 90. As part of my research I was looking at Italian football grounds and came across Genoaâs, which to me was more like a ground youâd see in England.
âWhen the Taylor Report came out, I assumed that Preston North End had plans for a new ground. What drew me to Genoaâs ground were the towers at the corners, their engineering. I wanted to create something unique for Preston North End, something that stood out,â says Ben, who as a child was entranced by the floodlights from the night matches at the old Deepdale stadium. âNorth Endâs original floodlights didnât taper upwards, they were square,â says Ben, who incorporated similar tower structures to those at Genoaâs stadium into the design of the floodlights.
Ben had his concepts drawn up as technical illustrations, and as Baxi was one of The Chaseâs clients he approached Bryan Gray to sponsor the first stand. âHe was very, very interested, and was the one who drove it through.â
Ben visited the board of Preston North End with his designs; however, as Preston Council owned the land, Ben needed to present his ideas to the council. He hit stumbling blocks along the way, being told that âitâs all very nice, but it wonât happen’.
Undeterred, Ben worked with Laurence King from Baxi on the business plan and David Robinson from FWP on the engineering side. Baxi bought the club and Bryan Gray saw the vision and insisted that the redesign of the stadium follow Benâs plans.
âWe did everything differently from what had gone before; we wanted to create something unique for the club,â says Ben. From the groundâs industrial-style architecture to the naming of the stands and the portraits of legendary players âpixelatedâ in the seating, it was important to Ben to keep that connection to the clubâs history.
âSteve White, who went on to become Global Marketing Director at JD Sports, designed innovative kits and a different kind of club shop. As a PNE supporting graphic designer, I was honoured when Bryan Gray asked me to modernise the club badge but very disappointed to see it later changed to what I consider a step backwards. But the structure of the ground, the fans still really like.â
Bringing the National Football Museum to Preston was also no mean feat. Ben again worked with Bryan Gray to make it happen.
âWe needed something outside, on the street as a landmark to let people know where the museum was,â says Ben. âI thought it would be great to interpret the famous photo of Tom Finney taken at Stamford Bridge, to capture it in 3D and cast it in bronze.â
Local sculptor Peter Hodgkinson realised Benâs idea by creating The Splash, one of the most photographed sculptures in the city. Like many people of Preston, Ben thinks itâs a travesty that we lost the National Football Museum to Manchester.
The Union Carriageworks apartments in Guild Hall Street were another of Benâs projects. He also set up The Chase, his creative consultancy in Manchester, over three and a half decades ago â when most creative design consultancies were based in London. It is now one of the most awarded creative consultancies in the world and has worked with an array of clients including Astra Zenica, Royal Mail, M&S Bank, JD Sports, Transport for London, and Water Aid.
Ben has plans to place billboards along Market Street West, opposite Lost, working with a national arts organisation to showcase exciting new work by a diverse range of artists. There are also plans to redevelop the rooms above Lost and an ambition to connect Prestonâs creative community within the venue, holding events and collaborating with other creative organisations in the city.
Despite the difficult year or so ahead, Preston is on an upward trajectory. New developments and businesses are opening in the city centre, and young talented local entrepreneurs, like Ryan and Charlie, brimming with positivity are showing the way. Benâs restoration of a forgotten corner of Preston is set to go, and we canât wait to see what happens.
Lost Bar and Pizzeria is offering 25 per cent off beer and wine until Christmas Day.
Lost Bar and Pizzeria is located at 133 Market Street West, Preston. Follow on Facebook and Instagram. To book a table to eat, email hello@lostpizzeria.com.
You can follow Chain House Brewing Company on Facebook and Instagram.
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