A tired office and its car park on the corner of Derngate and Castilian Street, in Northampton's Cultural Quarter. Submitted at 95 apartments, granted at committee for 31 homes, sold with the permission and built to the consented design.
A visualisation of the consented Derngate frontage, from the amended elevation of February 2020. Not a photograph.
The consented scheme keeps the Victorian house on Castilian Street and converts it, puts a terrace of apartments along Derngate, and tucks four townhouses into the mews behind, with a gated way in from Derngate. Our own photograph shows the corner as it was.
The Derngate block runs along the street. The retained house and its new rear wing face the courtyard. Eight parking spaces sit between them, behind gates.
Amended site plan, February 2020. Not to scale. Zoom to read it.
The Derngate elevation takes its rhythm from the adjacent terraces: a parapet line, chimney stacks, inset dormers in a slate mansard, and five front doors behind railings.
Amended elevation, February 2020. Not to scale. Zoom to read it.
Our photograph of the site while the application was live: the Victorian house behind its garden wall, the car park beside it and the tree that both schemes kept.
Full permission, 19 March 2020.
The council found the amended design an appropriate and sympathetic contrast to the heritage assets around it, and accepted that the scheme could not carry affordable housing or Section 106 contributions and remain viable.
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Twenty-five conditions, covering materials, 1:10 window reveals, conservation rooflights and the trees. The decision was issued four days before the first lockdown. Eighteen months later the site was sold with the permission, and the buyer built the consented scheme.
The first scheme, submitted in November 2018, drew 30 objections from 26 residents. Officers shared the concern: too tall, too dense, too dominant for the conservation area. Historic England asked for the scale to come down. Underneath the heritage case sat two more problems. The site was allocated for employment, and its viability report showed it could not carry the affordable housing and Section 106 contributions a major application normally brings.
The case officer was willing to work with us, and over two rounds of amendment we rebuilt the scheme around what the street could accept. The Victorian house at 2 Castilian Street, first proposed for demolition, was kept and converted to two townhouses. The single block wrapping the corner was split in two, re-opening the view through to the mews behind. The Derngate building came down to four storeys reading as three with a roof, its parapets, chimneys and inset dormers taken from the adjacent terraces, its windows set back for shadow. When the amended scheme went back out, the 30 objections became six, and Historic England wrote that the buildings no longer appeared out of scale and overly dominant.
In parallel we supported the viability case. The council's own independent assessor reached the same conclusion as the applicant's viability report, even on a lower profit margin: the scheme could only be delivered without affordable housing or Section 106 contributions. The officer's report weighed that against homes on a long-vacant brownfield site, and the council, which could not show a five-year housing land supply at the time, came down in favour of the homes.
The committee granted full permission on 17 March 2020 and the notice followed two days later. In September 2021 the site was sold to a regional developer with the permission, and the scheme was built over 2022 and 2023 to the consented design. The townhouses are now a gated mews in the Cultural Quarter. Our work ended at the decision. The buyer's own team delivered it.
We designed the scheme, ran the application and its amendments, coordinated the consultants and the viability case and took it to committee. Our work ended at the decision.
Two amendment rounds, no refusal.
About 2,140 sqm gross internal in all.
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