UWE students create a report and preliminary designs for restoration project of 1922 cottage, Goblin Combe

Rosie Turner, Goblin Combe Project Manager, tells us about her experience working with University of West of England Architecture students on a restoration project for the cottage.

Groundwork South owns Goblin Combe Lodge and its surrounding woodland. Situated in the heart of rural North Somerset (just 8 miles south of Bristol), Goblin Combe is a limestone gorge set in an area of 130 acres of natural woodland. Our 38-bed residential lodge is on the edge of this woodland, where we also have a yurt, outdoor classroom, 8-acre camping field, as well as a Grade-II listed cottage complete with a fully equipped kitchen and communal living space.

A 1922 cottage for nature-based environmental education

This cottage was established in 1922 by the Rev. and Mrs. Skinner to provide disadvantaged families in Bristol with the opportunity to holiday in the countryside. In the years since, the site has been maintained by local volunteers, the local council, and now by Groundwork South, where we continue to retain its originally-intended function, with a focus on providing disadvantaged families with opportunities for nature-based environmental education and recreation.

Despite regular maintenance, the cottage is now in need of repairs and renovations to prevent substantial, long-term, and potentially irreversible damage to this historic building. We have been advised through the first stages of a programme of restoration, involving preliminary surveys and studies, by a local architect who also lectures on the Architecture and Planning course at UWE. Through this connection, we have offered to be part of their final year ‘Agency’ project, where 4th year students undertake a ‘live’ brief to provide a meaningful and useful output that we, the client, can use.

Exploring the feasibility of a restoration project

For us, this is a report and preliminary designs on the feasibility of our restoration project, looking at current and future use and all the ecological and planning requirements surrounding it on our site. We will then present this to potential funders and partners for the design and capital building work, and it will also inform the required submissions for planning permission. 

Undertaking a renovation project on a listed building in an ecologically sensitive site (bordering a Site of Special Scientific Interest, Regionally Important Geological Site, Special Area of Conservation, and Natural England ancient woodland), it takes time to garner good advice, funds to follow this through and commitment to sustainability principles to create sensible and useful designs for long-term benefits to the communities we serve.

By engaging in this project with UWE, we’ve nurtured shared values and goals of providing opportunities for young people and improving the built and natural environment for communities.

The students have now completed their five week project, having begun it by joining one of our community volunteering days to talk to people who know and use the building (and gained themselves some new skills in post-whacking and seed sowing!).

They spent the majority of their time in the studios at UWE, supported and mentored by course staff, and they kept in regular contact with me for questions and updates, joining us again on site to refine ideas and understand details.

It was exciting to see preliminary designs coming together and I’ve been happily challenged by their probing questions and creative thinking, so the partnership has worked extremely well. 

The report that they delivered to us is an excellent and extremely valuable piece of work, providing well-researched information, clearly articulated summaries, intelligent conclusions and creative and practical design ideas. It not only delivers a vital tool for us to attract the funding to undertake the renovations, but is also gives us lots of ideas for future development of the wider site. 

We’re excited to have just been successful in a bid to The Society of Merchant Venturers in Bristol to provide part-funding for a UWE graduate to work on our project as an intern over the summer, again under the supervision of our architect contact Sam Wright. This will enable us to progress our planning and design further as we apply for larger funding pots for the capital works.