Oldham's old library, dark for eight years, just won two national awards as a civic rebirth

For 130 years, Oldham's library on Greaves Street was a centre of town life — then it closed in 2017 and sat dark for eight years. Now the Grade II-listed building, renamed the J.R. Clynes Building, has reopened as a civic and cultural hub with a council chamber, an art gallery, a theatre-workshop studio and a community garden — and it has just won two honours at the 2026 British Construction and Infrastructure Awards, for Cultural and Leisure Project and for Retrofit and Reuse. Judges praised its conservation-led restoration and noted that 75% of its suppliers were local. A town kept its memory, and gave it a future.

SDG 11 · Sustainable cities and communities — Mechanism: infrastructure build