Guild Heritage
Conversion of an unloved historic building to apartments
Our client said….
To help bring Guild Heritage back to life, we enlisted the help of award-winning Bristol architects O’LearyGoss, who specialise in the careful conversion of historic buildings. Thanks to their expertise, many original features have been retained and restored, including the Edwardian red brick facade and the revival of the entrance and hallway.
The Story
The Guild Heritage was purpose-built in 1913 to house ‘The Guild of the Poor Brave Things,’. This was one of the first purpose-built social clubs for people with disabilities.
It was converted into offices in the 1980s and gradually became run down. The two inner courtyards were infilled and tuned into office space.
Our client, Hatchbury, purchased the building in 2016.
To cope with the deep plan, our proposals opened up the closed-over courtyards to bring light into the building. The building was converted into 20 apartments in a mix of studios, one and two-bedrooms. The majority of this work was approved under “permitted development” planning regulations, for which we made a ‘Prior Approval’ application.
The existing external fabric of the building was left unaltered with the exception of the removal of the later additions to the entrance, opening up the lightwells to reinstate the original courtyards, and insertion of rooflights in the main roof pitches. These alterations provided natural light and ventilation to the new apartments, and respected the nature of this unlisted building of merit.
A new timber framed structure was inserted in the central part of the building (originally an assembly hall). This provided three levels of apartments, with the topmost built ‘into the rafters’.
The project was built under a design-and-build contract, and our design successfully appealed to first-time buyers, resulting in all apartments being sold on launch day.
Project Team:
Client: Hatchbury
PM: Riverstone
Structural consultant: Rise
Contractor: Construction Total Solutions