Visitor centre and restoration grant for Willow Tea Rooms Building

Glasgow’s Willow Tea Rooms Building, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, has received a £3.6m Heritage Lottery Fund grant to preserve the building and open a new visitor centre.

The award will allow the Willow Tea Rooms Trust to continue its work restoring the original tea rooms and Salon de Luxe, which was credited as a symbol of social change when it was originally established in 1903.

It will also facilitate the Trust’s plans to incorporate an interactive visitor centre, education and learning suite, conference facility, and shop.

The Willow Tea Rooms Building is the only surviving tea room designed in its entirety by Mackintosh.

Celia Sinclair, founder and chair of the Willow Tea Rooms Trust, said: “Works to the exterior of the building are almost complete. The Heritage Lottery Fund award means that our vision for restoring the interior, commissioning furniture, crockery, cutlery and building the interactive visitor centre along can now forge ahead.”

The Monument Trust, Glasgow City Heritage Trust, Historic Environment Scotland, Glasgow City Council and an Expert Mackintosh Advisory Panel are among the organisations to support the Trust with its work.