Terrace Seat

The Terrace Seat is a renewed resting place in the C18 English Landscape Garden at Hestercombe, overlooking the Pear Pond.

The seat is made with steam bent oak in the shape of a seashell.  It starts the walk around the gardens, and can been seen from the Mausoleum at the end, echoing the beginning and end of a journey.

Rockwork Seat

A small seat in the C18 English Landscape Garden at Hestercombe, overlooking the valley. The naturally fractured Morte slate uprights follow the strata of the existing rock outcrop, to support horizontal polished limestone seat and back.

Secret World, Education Building

Conversion of the existing Goat House building to provide a new education facility, and the construction of a new link and extension to house additional service facilities.

Bristol Zoo Entrance & Shop

Bristol Zoo’s entrance reception had become cluttered and confused with the shop.

The resolution was to clarify the central pavilion as reception only with a new wing inserted discreetly to one side into a pocket of unused land.

The new steel framed pavilion responds in form, size and scale to the original classical 1830s lodges.  In the longterm it can become a completely separate reception and shop building.

Gorilla House

Bristol Zoo’s gorilla family is growing so their den space has been doubled.  This has been converted from the 1872 giraffe house, and is equipped with timber climbing frames, an adaptable network of ropes and a splash pool.

Visitors are allowed to walk through the space in a new steel and glass hide, over which the gorillas can walk, making them predominant.  A new extension for the keepers overlooks the gorilla island.

Education Centre

The repair of a late 18c water mill and 19c barn at Hestercombe Gardens, and their conversion into an education centre.  Old equipment has been refitted in the mill, together with an exhibition of early energy production.  The barn has become a multi function education space.

The intention was to demonstrate how old buildings can be converted sensitively, and incorporate low energy modifications.  The roofs, walls and floors have been super insulated, and the complex is heated with a log batch burning boiler.

Hestercombe Gardens Visitor Centre

New visitor centre for an 18th century landscape garden, and a 20th century garden by Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll.

It required the repair and extensive alterations of a stable complex to make ticket office facilities, cafe, shop, function and interpretation areas as well as external ramps, walks and landscaping to control and improve access and setting for the gardens.

Brean Down Fort

Brean Down Fort was one of four Napoleonic/ Palmerston gun emplacements that protected the Severn estuary. The down itself is a SSS1 site.

The buildings became ruinous after WW2 and have been consolidated, repaired and made safe, with improved access and new interpretation panels describing the history, fauna and flora.