City of London Freemen's School
City of London Freemen's School
We worked as both conservation advisors and structural engineers for the overhaul of The City of London Freemen’s School in Ashtead, Surrey - one of three schools owned by the City of London Corporation.
As conservation advisors, we produced a Conservation Management Plan for the site in order to establish a framework to renew and expand its facilities in the context of its Grade II* listed mansion house, which it moved to from its original Brixton home in 1926. Working initially with Richard Griffiths Architects, we considered the pressures facing the landscape, identifying potential development locations that would not infringe on its special qualities or character of the green belt, and investigated how upgrading the mansion could not only improve access and boarding and dining facilities, but also undo damaging alterations made by the School to some of its fine historic interiors over the last eighty years.
The School subsequently implemented much of this thinking, with an extensive refurbishment completed by Hawkins\Brown architects in 2021. The completed £18m project includes a new 60-bedroom boarding house and music school with practice rooms and a 200-seat recital hall. For this, we acted as structural and civil engineers, where we conceived of the project’s key structural design objectives and interventions during the design stages of the project.
Client: City of London Corporation
Architect: Richard Griffiths Architects and Hawkins\Brown