Inside the 'mammoth' redevelopment of the former Rowntrees factory in York

Latimer, the home building arm of Clarion Housing Group, purchased the site around five years ago, and have since continued to develop the property with a plan to convert the building, titled Cocoa Works, into 279 new homes.

Mr Cook noted the challenge of preserving the building’s history, while still bringing it up to modern living standards.

“That's part of the conversation when you do these big historical buildings. I'd always say they're slightly for the brave.

“When you’re doing big refurbishments of a historic building you don't generally know the challenge you've got to deal with until you actually start uncovering it.“This is a piece of history and you’ve got to curate it like a piece of history.”

The land, which sits off Haxby Road, was bought by Joseph Rowntree in 1890.

After building a large industrial complex for the manufacturing of gum products, the site was developed upon and adapted by Rowntrees into the mid part of the 20th century.

In the latter part of the 1980’s, Rowntrees was acquired by Nestle, and shortly after the site began to produce Nestle products such as Kit-Kats, of which one billion were made every year.

In 2017, Latimer purchased the site after it had stood empty for around 12 years.

In 1901, Joseph Rowntree founded the village of New Earswick, after buying 123 acres of land outside York, with the vision of providing better living conditions for those on low incomes.

Similarly, Clarion’s own story began with 19th century entrepreneur William Sutton, who after his death left his fortune to be used to build affordable housing across major UK cities.

This idea is also something Latimer hope to reflect in their development.

As well as the Cocoa Works development, Latimer are also developing the site behind the former factory into 200 homes and 100 apartments, in a development they have titled Cocoa Gardens.

Thirty per cent of the homes at Cocoa Works, and 35 per cent of the homes at Cocoa Gardens will be sold as affordable housing.

“What we're trying to do is branch out and make a product that is available to the wider market - especially targeted at lower incomes and key workers,” said Mr Cook.

After acquiring the Cocoa Gardens site during the pandemic, Latmier changed the initial plan of 500 apartments to instead focus on family homes.

“We’re doing family housing - which York has a real shortage of,” said Mr Cook.

“There's a lot of apartments in York, so we decided we would do a lot more family housing, a lot more low density, following more of a traditional style of the area around Cocoa Works.”

Mr Cook said similarities between parent company Clarion and Rowntrees are in part what inspire the company to preserve the history of the site.

“We come from a long history as an organisation - our founder was a philanthropist like Joseph Rowntree, so there's a connection between the two organisations,” said Mr Cook.

“We're an asset owner, but also a legacy owner, and part of our mandate is to create homes for people, but to do it in a manner that stands for what we’re about as a company that is 100 years old, and to preserve history.

“We're a charitable organisation, and we still have to be commercial in our development activities, but it does allow us to do things that many other people wouldn't do.”

Many of the homes will be sold as shared ownership, wherein a buyer can buy a percentage of a property through monthly payments whilst renting.

Mr Cook believes shared ownership is something which developers in the North could improve on.

“In London there's an absolute understanding of what shared ownership is and one of the biggest things now is actually getting people to understand the attractiveness of it.

“Most people think ‘I'm always going to have to rent, I can't afford to buy,’ but what shared ownership does is give you that opportunity to come in - put down a deposit - buy anything between a 35 and 30 per cent share.

“It's a cost effective way now of being able to buy your first home then ultimately staircase your way through as you move through your career.

“And the other nice thing is it allows you to buy the home where you want to live - and buy the share you can afford - rather than being forced to buy somewhere else where it's more affordable.

Mr Cook also noted Latimer’s awareness that those buying properties at Cocoa Works and Cocoa Gardens were also drawn in by the site's history.

“The people who are buying it are buying it because it's the building it is and it has the history it has,” he said.

“There's a challenge about the viability and feasibility of doing big historical buildings, but the flip side of it is that what you're getting is people buying into the history, which is always a really exciting thing.”