ELEMORE HALL SCHOOL

Elemore Hall is a Grade I listed building in County Durham. Little was known about the 40 acre site and recent built interventions had compromised significant elements of the setting. The Hall itself sits as the centre piece of a planned landscape which is now largely lost within its current us as an  educational environment.

​

Mosedale Gillatt Architects led a team of consultants to provide a Masterplan and a capital development project comprising a sports hall, education and music rooms and a recording studio. This entailed a full interrogation of constraints that would inform development on the site. These constraints, (including the location of a raised Elizabethan garden, a lost walled garden and ancient woodland) were described and shared with stakeholders, which helped justify why the design options were emerging in a particular way.

From this initial feasibility study and options appraisal, alternative locations for individual functions could be balanced against  the need to respect and reinstate the layout of the historic gardens. The emerging Masterplan began to describe function and built form in a way that allowed high quality contemporary design to reference lost historic structures.

A series of engagement sessions both with the client and English Heritage meant the capital project was fully supported prior to formal submissions for planning and listed building consent.

​

Photo credit - Elemore Hall School