Manor House Square and Cafe

In the 1920s, a major programme of road widening was undertaken in Southall, resulting in the demolition of some of the 16th century Manor House, a new war memorial, a neo-classical parade of shops, a ‘mock-tudor’ toilet block and a new park, Manor House Grounds, created out of the former Manor House gardens.

DK-CM’s project is an adjustment to this 1920s scheme. Widening the pavement rather than the road, we have created a new square in the centre of old Southall. This new space turns the Manor House’s north façade into a public front for the first time, and creates a series of new entrances into the park, significantly increasing footfall from the high street. The granite surfaces of the new square are laid in a ‘timber-framed’ pattern in the spirit of the adjacent architecture.

DK-CM also proposed a new community café housed in a transformed 1920s municipal toilet block. The café was designed to improve the usage, facilities and natural surveillance of its context, whilst providing programme to the new space and public toilet facilities to the public at large. The design intervention is primarily a real timber-frame extension to the ‘mock’ timber-frame of the original building, itself a tribute to the ancient Manor House which sits adjacent across the new square.