Reformed character

1834'S Poor Law obliged every parish to build a workhouse for its destitute. From 1945, the NHS started turning the best into its network of cottage hospitals. 1999, and the rationalisation of health trust property means these one-time workhouses are among the most common conversion opportunities being offered to residential developers.

The stigma that survives the workhouse's final abolition in 1935 means the origin of such schemes are kept from sales literature. But it is the workhouse form that developers are knowingly emphasising in conversions. Workhouses were built to a blueprint, a central octagon rising higher than four wings of accommodation which led off forming a cross. At the top of this central octagon was the "panopticon", an observation post used by the workhouse wardens to police four courtyards below where men, women, boys and girls separately toiled in the open air on soul-destroying labour. One wing of the accommodation cross abutted a rectagonal building that formed the workhouse's deliberately imposing frontage. The four courtyards' remaining open sides were closed off with much lesser quality single-storey storage buildings. Demolished, these make a good source of appropriate materials for refurbishment.

The long wings separating the courtyards are rarely less than 5 m wide, being designed to accommodate a dormitory arrangement of two beds facing toe to toe with an aisle down the middle. While the difficulty of circulation in this cruciform layout makes conversion to offices messy, the wings happily partition into flats or cottages, especially as they do not face other dwellings across the courtyard. The panopticon offers flats with views and the workhouse frontage more cottages and, in some cases, three-storey townhouses.

Of course, the workhouse often comes with listed building status, and thereby a guarantee the project team will spend months in consultation with conservation officers debating materials. There is also the uncertainty of pricing refurbishment.

Even so, honest period architectural charm and the appeal of real stone or slate aged over 150 years offer a premium on any locality's sales values. And, as developers who are turning these otherwise derelict problems into attractive new homes have discovered, converting a workhouse works wonders for keeping it out of the doghouse with planning authorities.

Study 1: St Luke's Court, Marlborough, Wiltshire redeveloped by English Courtyard

At St Luke's Court, a grade-two listed workhouse built by the "Marlboro Union" in 1837 for the "undeserving poor" has been remodelled into eleven £200 000-plus units of not less than 1100 ft2 each. Architects Sidell Gibson have also designed two new blocks of two-storey houses, one a terrace inspired by a demolished Victorian hospital block and a second terrace styled like the workhouse's frontage, down to dentals and engraved dedication.

New Bath stone has been used to match original stonework, sourced from quarries in Somerset close to where the original would have came from. The stone's ex-works price of £140/m2 is among generally high-end specification in the £2.4m scheme's build contract - there is even 24 carat gold leaf on a heron weathervane. It was hoped that after Kennet District Council had agreed to allow the lesser quality outer buildings to be demolished, they would provide enough facing stone for the new-build. However, total rebuilding of the workhouse walls - an early form of cavity wall with 100 mm inner and outer skins and a 100 mm void filled with rubble obliged the contractor Hutton to exhaust reclaimed stock. The building meets latest Build Regs through the use of several specials, notably unique (and now design protected) double-glazed timber sash windows with trickle vents hidden in the headers.

The remodelling by project architect Richard Morton, now an expert on workhouses, artfully exploits cruel original features: four courtyards where men, women, girls and boys were separated at work will return as four individually-landscaped courtyards, a formal hard landscaped with well, one laid to lawn, a cottage garden and a rose garden.

Study 2: St James Gate, Saffron Walden, Essex redeveloped by Taywood Homes (Central)

Three imposing storeys of workhouse built in 1835 in Saffron Walden offer clues to how Essex's now sought-after market town was once riddled with rural poverty. Harder evidence is found in an adjacent gaol house built contemporaneously.

Taywood Homes (Central), with its sister Taywood Refurbishment, are amazingly converting both buildings into residential, with planning for a single dwelling from the gaol, one maisonette and 36 apartments in the refurbished workhouse turned hospital, and 12 more in a new-build gatehouse.

Once finished, this should be easily the most impressive new housing scheme in the area and is attracting visitor traffic to match, if not sales. Says regional managing director Peter Gurr, refurbishment veteran: "Sales momentum is different from new-build. Refurb purchasers need to go in and see what they're actually purchasing.

It's in later phases that sales pick up." His Taywood region will do about one-third of its 400 units this year as refurbs. "The fabric is the most difficult but the fit-out is almost going back to new-build."

St James' fabric problems were mostly in the upper floors. Party walls not only partition the long dormitory runs into apartments but only now guarantee parallel skins of brick cavity wall do not walk. Site manager John Reynolds clearly holds Victorian builders in low esteem as he relates how the upper floors' retained structure of cast iron Y-beams supporting narrow brick vaulted arches was once finished with rubble and dubious concrete.

Says Reynolds: "The trick is to get near the real price at the beginning and then get someone who can do refurbishment work."