Click here for a slide show of Andy Marshall’s new photographs of our conversion and extension of Summer Hill near Ulverston. The scheme consists of five apartments, and a new house for the owners.

The approach from the drive. New entrance to the apartments to the left, and the entrance to the new private house beyond.

Approaching the new house at upper ground level. The original Georgian mansion is to the right, now converted into apartments.

Our scheme for twelve new houses at Dunsop Bridge in the Forest of Bowland, Lancashire, has received Planning Approval.

The new affordable houses for rent are being constructed for the Duke of Lancaster’s Housing Trust and form a sensitive new addition to this village in a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The County Council AONB officer commented: In many ways this application exemplifies the high standards that can be achieved in planning design of new development to conserve and enhance the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Our project for the Finsley Gate/Healey Royd site in the Weavers’ Triangle included the development of concept designs for the re-use and conversion of Finsley Mill, one of the large historic structures on the site.

The upper drawing shows the proposed ‘hollowed-out’ structure of Finsley Mill with new insertions for offices and hotel.

The lower drawing shows a sketch development of the indicative masterplan.

A project for the mixed-use development of the Finsley Gate/Healey Royd site in the Weavers’ Triangle Conservation Area. The indicative masterplan for client St Modwen proposes housing and offices in a series of character areas. The scheme was prepared in consultation with the Prince’s Foundation, the Prince’s Regeneration Trust, English Heritage and Burnley Borough Council. The project has been submitted for Outline Planning Approval.

St Modwen website

On Tuesday 16 November Francis Roberts accompanied HRH Prince Charles and master-planner Leon Krier on a visit to our newly completed houses at Poundbury, Dorchester. This is our first completed scheme at Poundbury and consists of four houses around a sheltered courtyard.

Project for a new house and the refurbishment of a Georgian house at Summer Hill, Spark Bridge near Ulverston. The picture was taken in January 2010 immediately prior to the Phase ll refurbishment of historic building.

We are designing two new care homes for the Newquay Growth Area proposed by the Duchy of Cornwall. The drawing shows elevations of a care home for the adult mentally ill. The building will accommodate thirty residents in a scheme which includes public and private courtyards that will integrate the community with the wider settlement.

The Buildings of England, Lancashire: North by Clare Hartwell and Nikolaus Pevsner is a survey of the most significant buildings in this area since Roman times. We are well represented in the book having perhaps the most entries of any contemporary architectural practice in Lancashire.

Selected excerpts

Preston: Outer, East: THE TRIANGLE. No. 3 is a house built in stages between 1967 and 2000 by Francis Roberts Architects. Apart from the latest swimming pool addition (2000), off to one side (somewhat classical in flavour), it looks all of a piece and very individual. It would be hard to identify the earliest part, yet nothing smacks immediately of the 1960s. A plot of uneven ground is exploited to create a layered effect. Dominant accents are the plain rendered walls, copper roofs, the raised windows and funnel-like roof-lights. Inside the juxtaposition of low, friendly, faintly Scandinavian rooms with plenty of timber, the outer spaces with views, and tall top-lit spaces in circulation areas (and some other places) is very effective.

Blackpool: ST. CHRISTOPHER, Hawes Side Lane. 1989-91, by Francis Roberts Architects,
Who aptly describes the style as ‘My interpretation of Arts and Crafts or picturesque functionalism’. There are debts to Lutyens, but the style is convincingly Roberts’s own, obviously modern, imaginative and responsive to the site and its surroundings.

On the Blackburn Cathedral Precinct development: The DIOCESAN OFFICES are in the former CHURCH SCHOOL, SW, a quite sizeable, asymmetrical Gothic building of 1870-1 by Frederick Robinson of Derby. They are to be relocated in new buildings on the s side of the Cathedral by Francis Roberts Architects…The proposals envisage the provision of clergy accommodation and private apartments around public and private open spaces. The design drawings show buildings of traditional forms, to be finished in stone and render. They will no doubt exhibit the usual intelligence and restraint of the practice.