Dover Town Hall, the Maison Dieu, opens permanently to the public

Dover Town Hall, the Maison Dieu, opens permanently to the public after two-and-a-half year £10.5m restoration

Transcript

00:00I mean as you can see it's completely different to how it was before you know we've had to do all

00:04the decoration a lot of it that people won't see because we have to make sure it's watertight and

00:09let's face it you know that we've split up there for hundreds of years so every time we found a

00:13problem we found another problem um then we have to put out new heating systems brand new kitchens

00:18in it so it's a complete and utter revamp of of the whole building as I'm sure you'll agree

00:25it's much lighter now it's much more um attractive it actually it's a place you want to go into and

00:32want to be part of so you know it's a ten and a half million pound project taking two and a half

00:36years to get to this stage um and to be perfectly honest you know it will need investment going

00:41forward but you know as of this weekend it will be open permanently open first time in 800 years

00:47to the public yeah so it's really exciting times as far as I'm concerned you know we should consider

00:52all options for for utilizing this yeah particularly for the people of this district but also for

00:57people from further afield so they can come down they can enjoy it you know where else you know could

01:03cruise liners come with this amount of history and let's face it next door goes back to about 1203

01:09um yeah so if you're american actually it predates america so it is really exciting times well the

01:15dover society got involved in the major during 2010 we're quite concerned about the state of the

01:20building looking very tired um worn out the gutters were leaking paint being off the walls so we we

01:27got together with the district council the town council to sort of come up with the idea of a major

01:31restoration for the building to sort of do it justice for the town there's so many historical

01:36assets in dover this will add to the western heights dover castle the white cliffs dover roman

01:41painted house the town's full of history so it's just another pull to the tourists into the town for

01:45the tourist and residents