St. Bede's Chambers

A conversion of a Grade II listed building.

St. Bede’s Chambers is an impressive Grade II listed building dating back to 1923. It had been operating as a business centre and call centre.

Elegant Architectural were engaged to convert the building into seven flats. The mission was to provide spacious modern living nestled within the historic charm of this building.

This project offered the exciting opportunity of designing spaces that worked for modern living within the confines of a historic building. Our thoughtful design resulted in unique living spaces with historic characteristics, such as multiple aspect sash windows, panelled walls, and high moulded ceilings.

An imposing stone floored entrance hallway welcomes you into the building and the ornate iron staircase leads you to the first-floor apartments. The apartments offer kitchen living spaces illuminated with light from multiple sash windows and luxurious bedrooms with fitted furniture.

The transformation of St. Bede's Chambers successfully marries modern comfort with the enduring elegance of its historic past, creating seven unique living spaces that embody the best of both worlds.

The flats are accessed via an impressive entrance hall that showcases many of the building's historic features, such as Doric columns, an iron and stone staircase with brass handrail, and Venetian window. To ensure that the impressive nature of this hallway was not compromised, Elegant Architectural developed a design that reduced the need for altering the hallway and retained all of the architectural features of the space.

The flats were designed to be spacious and light, making a feature of the large traditional sash windows. To marry the modern with traditional, large open plan kitchen living areas were created, reflecting modern day living.

One impressive space was the panelled boardroom, featuring a moulded ceiling, moulded door surrounds with friezes over and historic parquet flooring. This room was to become the main living and bedroom space. However, as part of the planning approval no partition walls were allowed in this space. Elegant Architectural therefore devised items of free-standing furniture that could be used to create separate living and sleeping spaces without detracting from the significance of the space as a whole.

This project is currently under-construction and is due for completion in the Summer of 2020.

What the client said:

"Toolbox Group acquired St Bede's Chambers with the aim of bringing this imposing historic property back into use. We wanted a scheme that provided spacious, modern living, but that kept the historic character of the building. Elegant Architectural worked with our brief and came up with creative solutions to ensure that where possible the historic features of the building were retained. They were efficient, worked meticulously to ensure that our design brief was met, and kept us informed throughout."