Heritage and
Estate Consultancy

Most decisions about historic and existing buildings are made before anyone has fully understood what's already there. It's an easy step to skip, and a costly one.

I help organisations understand their existing and historic buildings before they decide what to do with them — saving time, money and strategic focus.

The best building is very often the one you already have. Reuse before rebuild, for cost, for carbon, and for character.

This is also where heritage and sustainability meet. Most organisations have a net zero commitment; far fewer have one that genuinely understands their historic buildings. Aligning the two, rather than leaving them in tension, is central to how I work.

Strategic work that comes before a project brief is written, for organisations across the UK with complex estates and long-term decisions to make: universities and schools, landed estates, dioceses, and other custodians of significant building stock.

This is the strategic groundwork that should come first. Two documents organisations often reach for are a Conservation Management Plan for a specific building, or a masterplan for the estate as a whole. Both are valuable, and both work best once this groundwork is done. Without it, they get commissioned for the wrong building, or built on assumptions, and they cost more and deliver less.

Not a design solution. The thinking that makes good design possible.

How it works — start anywhere, build as you need

  1. Understanding what you have

    A strategic assessment of your estate: its condition, what's there, what's underused, and what can be kept and reused rather than rebuilt — including what might be sourced locally or off-site, so nothing is carried on the building that doesn't need to be.

    Strategic Estate Assessment

  2. Understanding what it is

    The history, character and significance of a place: what makes it matter, and what makes it distinctive. Alongside this, a forward-looking view of the story you want to be telling in ten or twenty years. The foundation for better decisions, stronger funding bids, and a story you can tell to funders, stakeholders and your own community.

    Significance & Story, including Future Significance

  3. Deciding what to do

    A single strategic document for the whole estate: clear policies, a decision-making framework, and a review of the funding landscape, with your heritage obligations and sustainability targets explicitly aligned rather than left in tension.

    Heritage Asset Management Plan

  4. Defining the project

    Defining the right projects, phases and people before anyone is appointed, so the work begins from a well-formed brief that protects the building and carries your heritage and sustainability commitments from the outset.

    Brief Writing & Project Inception

  5. Ongoing advice

    A retained relationship: consistent, independent expertise at the table throughout, working in your interest rather than the design team’s or the contractor’s. You get the director, every time.

    Retained Strategic Adviser

Whether you're beginning to think about a single building or planning the future of an entire estate, I'd be happy to discuss how this might help.

Get in touch