Ry&mighty

Inside huge project to return landmark building back to original condition

- ETHAN DAVIES

"I USED to come in here as a kid with my mum and my grandma on a Saturday morning, trying to tap them up to buy something," Gary Lewis jokes.

He's talking about the old Debenhams on Market Street, which is currently a building site. His building site.

Gary, a senior project manager for construction firm Domis, is in charge of a 141-week-long project to get the Rylands Building - to give it its official title - ready for a massive makeover in the next few years.

He's chatting to the M.E.N. in the basement of the grade-II listed building, which enticed shoppers for more than half-a-century as a Paulden's, then Debenhams, department store.

But it won't be drawing in shoppers at the same volume again.

That's because Gary and his team are reinforcing the foundations to make way for a new extension which will add four storeys to the building. It will predominantly become offices.

The building opened as a warehouse for the Rylands Textile Company in 1932. It was sold to department store Paulden's in 1957, which was then taken over by Debenhams in the 1970s and re-branded accordingly.