One of the country’s most significant Medieval sites has welcomed bumper visitors in the three months since it reopened its doors following a £4.5m renovation.
The Lord Leycester in Warwick reopened to the public in August following an 18-month restoration project and since then has welcomed 10,000 people through its doors, all keen to enjoy some never-seen-before parts of the 700-year-old buildings, the café-shop, and enjoy a revamped visitor experience.
The repairs and renovations have marked a new chapter for the site, which has been home to deserving military veterans known as the Brethren since Elizabethan times, making it a unique site in both community and architectural terms.
The renovation project has seen The Master’s House and the Medieval wall at the Lord Leycester opened to visitors for the first time in its history, with an overall 23% increase in how much of the historic site’s areas (23%) is accessible to the public.
The improvements also saw the creation of new exhibition areas and an enlarged visitor attraction area including a new reception, gift shop and a café located in the Great Hall, as well as external repairs of the almshouse that form the homes of the Brethren who currently live at the Lord Leycester.
The groundbreaking work, funded by the NLHF (National Lottery Heritage Fund) in partnership with other national and local community donors, and led by architects Donald Insall Associates, also saw intricate and sensitive upgrade works, enabling level access throughout public areas and underfloor heating – all aimed at improving the visitor experience.
Dr Heidi L Meyer, Master of the Lord Leycester, said: “Critical for us as a charity that relies on heritage visitor footfall to pay our bills, is offering all of our visitors a comfortable and interesting experience so they will come back and recommend us to their friends. We think we have done that with this project!”
Matthew Vaughan, Practice Director at Donald Insall Associates, said: “Lord Leycester is a cluster of buildings of incredible importance, not only regionally, but nationally, with a connection to compelling historical figures from Elizabeth I to Oscar Wilde. Working with our client and the consultant team we are delighted to help secure its future and bring its many treasures and fascinating stories fully to light.”
The changes to the project and subsequent increased footfall, means the Lord Leycester had a better chance of securing its future for more years to come, allowing it to maintain a centuries-old tradition of hospitality, service and support for its Brethren.
“The endurance of Lord Leycester’s Hospital and its traditions, both as a collection of buildings and a community of Brethren is, by any measure, remarkable,” added Matthew Vaughan.
“From the point of view of a conservation architect, it is especially satisfying to have a building thrive to this day in its originally intended community use.”
Heidi Meyer said: “But the make and break of this project is footfall… how many people choose to pay to visit us and how many diverse audiences we can attract to this extraordinary site – the next few years will tell. Fundamentally we need revenue coming in to undertake annual maintenance to protect these precious sites for the centuries ahead of us”
About the Lord Leycester
The Lord Leycester is a Grade I-listed collection of half-timbered medieval courtyard buildings built by the religious affiliated United Guilds of Warwick between 1380 and 1430. In 1548 Henry VIII’s Reformation policies threatened seizure of the buildings by the Crown. The quick thinking of Guild Master Thomas Oken transferred the buildings legally to the non religious “Burgesses of Warwick” and for twenty-five more years the Guilds – known legally as the Burgesses, continued to hold their meetings and conduct business in the buildings they had built two hundred years previously.
In 1571, Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Earl of Leicester, a favourite of Queen Elizabeth, requested that the Guilds give him their buildings so he could start the Hospital of Earl of Leicester. The guilds could not say no to the most influential; and powerful man in England and in December 1571 Robert Dudley installed the new residents – a Master and recipients of the charity, the twelve Brethren – into the Guild buildings. He named it the Hospital of the Earl of Leicester – known today as the Lord Leycester.
The Lord Leycester continues to be of huge cultural and historic significance. In the Victorian Era, the Lord Leycester became a tourist attraction visited by eminent British Victorians including Charles Dickens, and affluent East Coast Americans travelling in Europe.
Its buildings remain a huge draw for visitors to Warwick, and the site itself has featured on TV and film, including Doctor Who and Steven Knight’s TV adaptation of A Christmas Carol.
About the architecture and the restoration
The Lord Leycester’s Grade I listed medieval timber-framed buildings represent some of the most significant European timber structures of their time, comprising three halls, a chapel dating originally from 1126 – rebuilt in the late 1380s and restored in 1860 by George Gilbert Scot – an inn with high-status early 17th-century accommodation, together with a Guild Hall (1450) and a cross-wing house.
Key areas of work on the NLHF-funded project include the restoration of the fabric of the medieval architecture that houses the public exhibits, the Master, and the Brethren’s homes.
Significant improvements have been made to the interpretation of the building with dedicated new exhibition areas for temporary exhibits as well as an enlarged visitor attraction area – including a new reception, gift shop and a café located in the Great Hall. Staff accommodation has been relocated to the second floor making the visitor-accessible area more spacious.
Although The Lord Leycester has weathered seven hundred years of history, including its surviving the Great Fire of Warwick of 1694, the ancient fabric of the buildings had begun to show its age. Some of the timbers required strengthening with steel rods, or new structural bracing. In some instances, the repairs have been hidden and in others they have been made obvious.
In areas such as the Chaplain’s Hall, historic floors have been taken up and re-laid at a new level to remove barriers to accessibility, while also recycling timber from elsewhere on site. This enabled the installation of underfloor heating, significantly improving the comfort levels of visitors. In addition, a platform lift was installed to ensure all public-facing areas are wheelchair accessible. The conservation approach to the work was pragmatic, with each repair undertaken based on its context.
Conservation practices and changing attitudes
Not only one of the most significant Medieval buildings in the UK and Europe, The Lord Leycester is also a lesson in changing attitudes towards conservation.
For example, throughout the Victorian period, the buildings were patched up and made to appear even more picturesque than they were before by the addition of plastering with ‘timber’ painted on top.
A circular painted plaque – the King James Seal – on the wall of the Great Hall of uncertain date commemorating the visit in 1617 of King James 1 was covered over in the 1960s, through the recreation of a medieval structure that had been previously demolished, and which arguably had greater historic significance than the seal itself.
The uncovering of the plaque prompted a significant debate over how to re-present it. The modern timber and plaster covering replicated a medieval structure that had been removed some time during subsequent centuries. The plaster background to the Seal had been painted to imitate timber framing.
It was decided to keep the newly uncovered fabric as it had been found pending more detailed conservation analysis and repair. The Seal is to be illuminated but remains – at least for the present – as an example of the layers of change that have been made to the fabric of these magnificent buildings over many generations.
Donald Insall Associates prepared the Conservation Management Plan for the Lord Leycester that led the practice to direct a multi-disciplinary team including Mann Williams, PMP Consultants and Fire Engineers OFR, to meticulously repair the medieval fabric and upgrade services together with improving visitor access and facilities.
