Historic Buildings: Planning Your Heritage Project

Altering historic buildings to turn into your home is a major life event. It is an extremely exciting investment in your future but the journey may feel like a daunting prospect. The idea of adapting older buildings or properties in historic contexts may increase this unease. Our guide assists you to uncover your objectives, highlights key considerations and outlines the delivery process.

Historic Buildings: Planning Your Heritage Project. A Brief Guide for Residential Clients

We have prepared a guide for private clients to assist uncovering your objectives, highlighting key considerations and outlining the delivery process when dealing with historic buildings. It is based on our experience working with private clients since 2008, delivering over 120 heritage projects in London and further afield. Our heritage experience includes projects in conservation areas and dealing with Grade I, Grade II* and Grade II listed buildings. Our guide covers vital topics we believe will be helpful planning your heritage project. Some of them are described further below.

Defining Your Priorities

We understand that construction work is not just about the final look but also about how your new home performs and the value added to your investment. Our guide includes 10 key questions, to help you identify your priorities for the project.

Journey to Completion

A construction project can be a long process and there a number of steps that need to be completed before work can start on site. for example planning and building control compliance. Our guide includes a simple to understand diagram, showing the typical route your project will take from beginning to end.

Heritage Terms

Whether your house is Medieval, Georgian, Victorian, Art Deco or Post Modern, or just located in the vicinity of a heritage asset your property may be affected by additional planning controls and considerations. We collated a list of terms and set out how they might affect your construction project.

People Involved

Architect’s services and the number of consultants can vary depending on the size and scope of project and your specific requirements as the client. Our guide maps out typical parties involved in a construction project (e.g. structural engineer, servives engineer or cost consultant) and their roles.

Hiring the Right Architect

Choosing the right architect for your historic building and dealing with your heritage project is vital. There are a lot of options out there and if it’s your first project the choice can feel overwhelming. Our guide provides you with a strategy to ensure you hire the right architect who is best suited to you.

Cost Checker

Depending on the size, quality and extent of your historic building project, the price of construction works can vary significantly. This a tricky initial query and yet 
it forms an important part of your brief. We have used our broad catalogue of heritage projects to compile a cost checker for various project scopes.

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