London Road,
Reading

Brief

The conversion of the existing three buildings into apartments and duplexes for sale on the open market. The three buildings formed part of the speculative residential development of Crown Land that commenced in the early C18 and rapidly gained momentum with the arrival of the Great Western Railway in Reading in 1840. The buildings were later acquired by the University of Reading but had been redundant for a decade prior to their recent acquisition by the developer. The gross internal area of the buildings was just over 4,000m2.

Challenges

The buildings were Grade II and II* Listed and located within one of Reading's Conservation Areas. The Grade II* building was on Historic England's Heritage At Risk Register and one of the buildings was in very poor condition with serious wet and dry rot damage.

Solution

The conversion proposal offers a mix of 53 one, two and three bedroom apartments of varying sizes to fit with the historic plan arrangement. Most of the previous harm caused by its previous educational use was reversed by means of simple strategies like party wall re-instatement and the removal of modern partitions. Historic plan hierarchy was reinforced by locating open plan living rooms behind the principal front facade with bedrooms located to the rear. Parking and amenity space is provided to the rear of the dwellings in a strong landscaped setting which benefits both from the historic building group of the conversion and other fine university campus buildings.