'What was this building?' Launceston icon offering free tours

The Door of Hope building in South Launceston turned 100 last year.

About 500 people attended its centenary celebrations and there was a huge appetite for history tours on the day - so much so that Door of Hope is trialling running them again for the wider community.

Door of Hope project manager Phenton Gardam said the sprawling brick building was being discovered by a whole new generation who never knew it as the Coats and Patons spinning mill.

"We're getting a lot of people coming now saying to us 'so what was this building?," Mr Gardam said.

"[It's] interesting because in my generation everyone knew what the mill was, you grew up with it, but now people are coming into town and going 'it's a really big building - what could that possibly have been'?"

The Coats Patons mill operated for about 75 years and employed thousands of workers before it closed in 1997.

Door of Hope church bought two thirds of the property in 2001 and have since transformed the building into a buzzing community complex that includes gyms, childcare centres, cafes and healthcare.

Mr Gardam said buying the eight-acre building had been a big step for an organisation that began as a "little church across from Brickfields".

"It got to a point in the '90s where the church leadership said 'can we continue to grow on this site?' And the answer was 'no, we've got to go somewhere else'," Mr Gardam said.

"You can imagine that must have been a big deal for people that had grown up relating to the church building, people that had been married there and all those kind of things."

They opted to move to a bigger building - the Allan's Plaster Products factory on Frederick Street, which is now home to Launceston Pathology.

But they soon outgrew that building too.

Mr Gardam remembers being part of a small group that went to scout out the empty Coats Patons building.

"We came back to Frederick Street and Geoff [Hays] said 'you know, we've done this before'," he said.

"It was a different scale, but we've seen as we step out in faith that amazing things can happen.

"So that was part of the process. It was a huge project to take on, but we'd seen what had happened."

Mr Gardam said he had thoroughly enjoyed running the tours, which take in stories, videos and memorabilia.

"As a church ... there's still a whole heap of things that have to be done - [you're always thinking] what do we still have to do?

"Whereas when we do the tour you go around and you're telling people and reminiscing back 100 years for the mill, but [also] back over our 20 years, there's been a lot achieved in that time.

"It's actually pretty amazing."

Door of Hope building tours are free and will run on the first Sunday and Monday of every month until September.

For more details visit doorofhope.au/tours