BELSAY HALL, CASTLE AND GARDENS

Mosedale Gillatt Architects was engaged by English Heritage in March 2015 to act as lead design architect for the masterplanning project. The role developed to include working closely with the Project Manager to plan and process work streams, whilst coordinating the work of all consultants to work towards a high quality finalised masterplan.

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The project team, coordinated by Mosedale Gillatt, included structural and MEP engineer, ecologist, landscape architect, and Quantity Surveyor working in parallel with the English Heritage commercial team, Audience Development specialist and interpretation experts.

The complexity of the task, involving the integration of new café, shop, ticketing
facilities, education hub and accommodation for volunteers, meant that programme and plan was key to the process The timely integration of season dependent surveys and the need to consider the needs of a wide ranging group of interests and technical constraints meant that Mosedale Gillatt needed to carefully record and declare all actions, ensuring that stakeholders are aware of opportunity and consequence at all stages.

To facilitate the decision making process and prior to commencing design work, the team carried out research and prepared a visual record which sought to describe constraints and opportunities offered by the site and buildings This document was revisited at each design team meeting to focus the team on critical indicators for the work, which may otherwise have been missed.

Masterplan options were scored against a variety of criteria and ultimately the decision was taken to locate new café facilities at the Castle. Mosedale Gillatt carried out a piece of work which led to a successful funding bid to NLHF toward the new café and play area which are now being delivered.

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Photo credit - English Heritage (image 1), Southern Green (image 4)