Simon Knight Architects won a competition to design a new community building and bridge for Bishop’s Stortford’s historic Castle Park. The project had to sensitively respond to the castle context while providing improved community facilities to a budget.

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Our Castle Park project for East Herts District Council and Bishops Stortford Town Council completed after a seven year journey. The project creatively re-uses and retrofits three existing buildings to form a cluster of community facilities with a mixed purpose hall, public toilets (including a Changing Places room) and a new cafe. The buildings have been overclad to incorporate additional insulation and provide them with a new modern appearance appropriate to the parkland setting. The project was delivered with the help of Heritage Lottery Funds.

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Regeneration of Existing Facilities

The strategy employed for the new community facilities was to re-use the existing buildings where feasible, while making them a coherent whole through key architectural moves. These included over-cladding the existing buildings in timber to give them a unified appearance, a new public plaza and a new colonnade structure, which ties the buildings together.

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A 'Place' and a Crossing

The design concept for the river crossing was to provide a generous deck that could accommodate activities, such as live music or a small market, as well as simply being a crossing to bring the two halves of the park together.