The empty plot of the old Top of the Town nightclub, in Northampton's Boot and Shoe Quarter. A four-storey scheme for it had just been dismissed at appeal. Our three-storey design, with a sawtooth roof that echoes the area's old shoe factories, was granted in 2014 and again in 2015.
A visualisation of the design granted in 2015, from our approved drawings. Never built. Materials indicative.
Full permission, 1 May 2014.
The council found the sawtooth roof appropriate in the conservation area, judged the inspector's design concern addressed, and said the design set a suitable benchmark for the rest of the Great Russell Street area. It granted the revised scheme in 2015.
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Neither permission was built, and both have now expired. When the council reported on a later scheme for the site in 2022, it described the design approved in 2020 as a simplified version of ours.
The plot had been empty since the nightclub came down in 2008. Its owner had outline permission for a four-storey building of offices and flats, granted before the area was made a conservation area in June 2011. When a renewed four-storey scheme was refused in 2012, the appeal turned on that designation. The inspector found that a flat-roofed building with curved corners would be out of keeping with the Boot and Shoe Quarter, and that some of its flats would face a warehouse roof and the smells from the restaurant kitchens behind.
We started from that decision. The conservation area is two-storey terraces punctuated by taller factory buildings, almost all of them with pitched roofs. So the new building came down to three storeys, kept its ground floor close to pavement level, squared its corners and took a sawtooth roof of steep zinc gables, read as a run of factory bays between brick piers. The flats that would have faced the warehouse were turned to a lightwell and to Earl Street, and the rear-facing flats were given mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, so their windows could stay shut when the kitchens were busy.
The council granted full permission on 1 May 2014. Its report found the inspector's concern addressed, and the sawtooth roof, more akin to an industrial building, appropriate in the conservation area. A revised scheme followed in November 2014 with us as agent, about 1.4 metres taller overall and with the car park entrance moved round to Charles Street. It was granted on 3 February 2015, the report noting that the 2014 permission had established the principle of offices and flats on the site, in a similar built form.
Neither permission was built, and both have expired. Other schemes for the site have been approved since, on their own applications. In 2022 the council's committee report on one of them set it against our 2015 design, and described the scheme it had approved in 2020 as a simplified version of ours.
We read the inspector's decision as a brief, designed a building that answered each point, drew both applications and acted as agent for the second.
The main issues in the 2013 appeal decision.
From our accommodation schedule, revision A.
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