Old War Office · Westminster · 2023
Heritage Statement and listed building consent for a restaurant fit-out in a Grade II* Whitehall landmark.
A ground floor unit in the Horse Guards Avenue range of the Old War Office, to be fitted out as a restaurant during the building’s conversion. Heritage Unlimited surveyed the fabric, prepared existing and proposed drawings and wrote the Heritage Statement. Listed building consent was granted.
The Old War Office was designed by William Young and completed in 1907 by his son Clyde Young and Sir John Taylor: five storeys of Portland stone in the Edwardian Baroque manner, with cupolas at the corners. It served the War Office and then the Ministry of Defence, is listed at Grade II* and stands in the Whitehall Conservation Area.
Heritage Unlimited was instructed in 2022, through the planning consultants MEK Town Planning and Design, to advise on the fit-out of a ground floor unit as a restaurant, with storage at lower ground level. The works were wholly internal. We surveyed the unit, drew it as existing and as proposed, and prepared the Heritage Statement for the listed building consent application, which Westminster City Council granted in April 2023.
- Property
- Old War Office, Whitehall, London SW1
- Listing
- Grade II*
- Location
- Whitehall, London
- Authority
- Westminster City Council
- Year
- 2022 to 2023
- Outcome
- Listed building consent granted
Finding what still matters in a stripped interior.
A building of this standing can lead to the assumption that every surface is precious. A proportionate assessment starts from what is actually there. We inspected and photographed the unit in June and October 2022, while the wider conversion of the building was under way.
Within the unit the finishes were largely modern or of no special interest: painted brick, concrete floors and modern secondary glazing. Three things of interest survived. There was a plaster cornice, damaged in places, mosaic borders to the floor at the entrance, and an internal doorway and arch with pilasters and capitals.
A busy interior shaped around bays, openings and a mosaic floor.
A restaurant needs an entrance, a bar, a kitchen, lifts and a great deal of servicing. Our early advice to the design team was to work with the structure of the building: partitions set out on the existing bays, kitchen fittings kept to the height of the window cills so that the windows were not covered, and lifts placed in an existing doorway and shaft.
The mosaic borders were kept in use as part of the entrance floor. The arched doorway was retained behind new finishes that are not fixed to it, so that the work can be reversed. At lower ground level, new openings were limited to positions where lintels already existed.
Drawings, a statement and consent.
We prepared the existing and proposed ground floor plans and sections, with location and block plans, and reviewed the interior designer’s drawings to advise which were needed for the application. The research drew on Ordnance Survey maps, the Whitehall Conservation Area Audit and the conservation documents prepared for the building’s wider conversion. The Heritage Statement was issued at the end of November 2022.
The conservation officer visited in February 2023 and asked for some refinements, including reinstatement of the cornice in the main dining room and a dado in the entrance lobby, which the project team took on. Listed building consent (23/00004/LBC) was granted on 20 April 2023.
What we did
Two services, one outcome.
Heritage Statements
The Heritage Statement identified the surviving features of interest within the unit and assessed the fit-out against them.
About Heritage Statements →Listed Building Consent
We prepared the existing and proposed drawings and advised the design team on the content of the listed building consent application.
About Listed Building Consent →Fitting out a unit in a listed building?
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