Barnes Village, Cheadle, Stockport

Henley Homes

With the Hospital as the centre piece, a layout developed comprising of exciting and high-quality buildings and spaces that will provide a legible and cohesive environment, enhance the sense of place and create an attractive and vibrant neighbourhood, in terms of both suburban space and the enclosing buildings, with siting, massing, scale and materials conceived to mediate between the existing historic context, contemporary expression and innovative layouts required to address the development brief. The renovated Hospital sits within formal gardens that allude to the building’s past.

The Hospital itself is a Grade 2 Listed Victorian Gothic-style building planned around an offset, basically cruciform, plan. Accommodation is arranged about and within the primary spine corridor, running east/west with entrances at both ends. Larger and smaller rooms exist on the south side of this corridor as do return blocks of accommodation at each end. Further accommodation is arranged off shorter corridors oriented north and south of the spine corridor. Unusually, there are three entrances to the building; the main entrance and clock tower positioned south and central of this circulation spine. The accommodation is largely arranged over ground and first floors; however, a partial lower ground floor and partial second floor exist with accommodation also in some roof voids.

Five basic house types share a largely repeat language of generous punched hole windows in a characteristically local brick. Stone margins are used to emphasise the reading of the individual dwellings. The roofscape is largely steep pitches, finished in plain clay tiles; the new build houses to the north of the convalescent garden have slate roofs. Some have natural metal-covered dormers that occur where required to create additional bedrooms. Where dwellings occur on corners, articulation of the elevations takes place, again to emphasise the reading of individual dwellings. Houses closer to the Listed building are generally three-storey with dormered roofs; at corners, they become more elaborate. Houses further away, particularly to the west, are generally two-storey with double-pitch roofs; again some are provided with dormers.

All houses have private front and rear gardens. There is a mix of car parking where nearly all houses have a garage and a car space; some just a garage, some just a car space. Where “on-site” parking is reduced, roadside parking is provided.