Milton Hall Cambridgeshire, Grade 2 Listed Building Consent Application.

Milton Hall is a Grade 2 listed building, it is monitored by South Cambs District Council Conservation Department. One of the first actions taken after being engaged by Milton Hall Estates was to meet the designated Conservation Officer (CO) on site for a walk around. We already had a good idea of the extent of works we were hoping to embark upon and a layout of the space reflecting the brief. Our initial thoughts on Listed Building Consent (LBC) were that is was likely to be confined to the historical part of the site and this was partially true, in that the historical parts of the hall were the main concern but any buildings attached to the hall also required very close scrutiny.

We were not proposing any new external works so planning was not required but a detailed design and specification was needed to gain LBC. There is a standard 8 week processing period for a LBC application and we needed to be as sure as possible that we were going to gain consent on the first application.  With this in mind we worked very closely with the CO ironing out any contentious design details in the early stages.

A successful application requires that the designer becomes fully aware of the history of the listed building, using wherever possible, historical precedence to inform the redesign. Historical research of Milton Hall provided us with a fundamental synergy with the site, which would not have occurred if this process was not required by law. The design was informed by this research and was much better for it.