Jewry Wall Museum, Leicester: A case study in sensitive adaptation of post‑war public architecture

By Owen Hatherley 2026-01-20T07:00:00

Jewry Wall Museum©Martine Hamilton Knight (16)

Source: Martine Hamilton Knight

A careful, minimal retrofit by Levitate transforms Dannatt’s 1959 Vaughan College into a modern museum while preserving its mild brutalist character. Owen Hatherley reports

Many British cities – anywhere with a “chester” or a “cester” in its name – are former Roman colonial towns, but they fall into two distinct types. There are those which obsessively conserve every trace of the past, and bitterly refuse the new, bar for chain stores and cars – think York, Bath, Chester – and there are those which are every bit as old, every bit as full of antiquities if you know where to look, but are also constantly constructing and rebuilding.

London is the most obvious of these, but Leicester is another.

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