Cliffe Castle

CambridgeHOK was approached by Cliffe Castle Heritage Park with a brief to build a glasshouse that would replicate the original Victorian glasshouse which stood on the site between 1875 and 1891.

This would be part of a £4.5 million restoration of Cliffe Castle Park. Although there was evidence on site that a glasshouse has once stood there, with many parts of the original base and some of the original heating pipes still intact, CambridgeHOK’s design team (which involves structural engineers, civil engineers and Tekla detailers) worked mostly from old black and white photographs of the original structure to establish what the original glasshouse would have looked like.

After several discussions and meetings with the client final designs were approved, and work began in CambridgeHOK’s factory in East Yorkshire to create an approximate 26 tonne metal structure. CambridgeHOK have the facilities and expertise to provide complete turnkey projects, which for a project like Cliffe Castle, which relies on attention to detail and smooth transitions between the design, manufacture and construction, is a useful option to have.

Other works for the project included providing bespoke under floor heating in the dome glasshouse and natural and mechanically assisted ventilation to control the internal temperature. The project was handed over in December 2017. CambridgeHOK’s Structural Design Engineer and the Project Manager Wasif Syed said, “Working from black and white photographs which showed limited information about the original glasshouse and dome structure was a big challenge for the design team. The project was very much one of a kind and was carried out with complete satisfaction”.

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