Cowper Griffith Architects are delighted to have been appointed to develop plans to restore Calverley Old Hall, an exceptional medieval manor house between Leeds and Bradford.
The Landmark Trust held an international design competition for the project to rescue the derelict manor house, which received 75 entries. Cowper Griffith’s proposals have been selected, with our winning design creatively reinventing the original pattern of use in the house including the Great Hall & Solar.
The project is highly significant given that the Grade 1 house was built and inhabited by the Lords of the Manor of Calverley from c.1250 to the late 18th century, placing it in the top 2.5% of all listed buildings in the country.
The Landmark Trust is a charity that rescues extraordinary buildings at risk of being lost, restores them and makes them available for short holiday breaks. The director Anna Keay said:
“We saw a really exciting and imaginative range of proposals for the revival of Calverley through the competition. However, the winning design stood out, and won the unanimous support of the panel, for its marriage of real sensitivity to the Grade-one listed building with an ingenious approach to creating wonderful, uplifting spaces within and around it.”
Chris Cowper, partner & design director at Cowper Griffith Architects, added:
“CGA are delighted to have won such a prestigious and rewarding project. Calverley Old Hall presents exciting opportunities, challenging us as designers to resolve a history of continuous change and invention, expressed in ruinous but rich detail. We are very aware that the success of the project will depend upon our ability to make the social history and architectural detail of the development of the Old Hall discernable & legible, through the expressed evolution of the masonry and worked timbers already exposed. We hope to create distinct but contemporary form and detail, subservient to the historic building, whilst enhancing the setting by drawing out and celebrating the tension between the new use and the architectural iterations visible in the historic fabric. We feel privileged to have been chosen by Landmark to take the Old Hall forward into the next phase of its history”.
