Leading lights

Britannic Park, Moseley

Charles Church is offering Arts & Crafts revival at Britannic Park in Moseley. The site was previously the home of Britannic Assurance and the old offices are being converted by CALA. Charles Church is building in the grounds and has included four detached houses in a Voysey-inspired style - echoing the site’s entrance lodge - complete with flying buttresses and rendered exterior. All external joinery is timber, the windows and entrance door by Rugby Joinery, the garage door from Cardale. The roof cover is Weatherwell’s Duchess range while the through-coloured render is by Monocouche.

Dickens Heath, Solihull

The Poundbury effect continues. Laing Homes Midland Region has created a house type, the Chatsworth, specifically to fit in with planning briefs for eye-catching buildings to be located in prominent positions to act as landmarks for pedestrians and motorists. The Chatsworth appears to be a grand Queen Anne-style farmhouse, capped by rounded dormers and two chimneys. In reality, it’s a terrace of three 110 m2 townhouses, one entrance on the front elevation and the other two located on the gable walled-ends. It was first developed at Chadwick End in Solihull in response to demands from the planning authority for a strongly featured building to add to the overall strength of the development. Laing has chosen to use it at the 800-home Dickens Heath site as well where Barton Willmore Partnership has created a design brief calling for a number of distinctive buildings in order to create a more authentic village variety. Among the 190 houses it is currently planning to build at Dickens Heath, Laing has also included a row of cottages and a series of barn conversion-type homes built over garages. The Chatsworth itself features timber windows by Premdor Crosby, and mullions not in stonework but render. Whereas the porches are traditional (by Gallows & Healey), the roofline dormers are GRP by Storm King.