The following are a range of articles on conservation, heritage, education, public, commercial, religious, residential and urban design by architects firm in London, Wimbledon, Marcus Beale Architects
Slyfield Farmhouse Stables
New stables at Slyfield Farmhouse in Surrey
Read more.Work continues at Grade I Listed Slyfield Farmhouse and its outbuildings. The shell of the new stables building is almost complete and repairs to the Grade II Listed outbuildings have begun.
Read less.Beulah Vista Care Home opens

View to city from Beulah Vista Care Home

View to city from Beulah Vista Care Home
Beulah Vista care home opened on 14 May 2022. A new build care home of 59 bedrooms, arranged around the courtyard garden, offering a marvellous standard of care with individual room layouts, variable room sizes, generous breakout spaces and themed corridors. The building, situated on the crest of Norwood Hill commands fabulous views over the city. The Mayor of Croydon attended the opening.

Front view of the care home on its opening day 14 May 2022
Wimbledon Museum Base Build – practical completion
The Museum of Wimbledon is located in a listed building on Ridgway Wimbledon. MBA directed operations to conserve the museum room, originally built as a classroom, to suit a new museum installation which will be opened in the autumn of 2022. As with the best architectural projects of conservation, the works are almost invisible. The floor sagged. Why? because a plumber had cut through sturdy Teulon joists mid span. It was stabilised. Two new lines of herringbone strutting were installed, making good to the lime pugging, to lose the floors ‘spring’. Ceilings in lath&plaster were of the age, should we guarantee they will not fall down? They were kept, under-lined with 9mm plasterboard with long fixings back to the joists. Bay windows were extensively repaired, lined with cork internally, repointed externally, and made safe with new discreet stainless steel bars and expanded stainless steel laths. The acoustics are amazing, because a) undesigned resonances in the structure have been addressed, b) no two surfaces are exactly parallel so no hot frequencies, and the room has height. A great space for music practice. Until the exhibits are in and there are plenty of people to soak up around, it remains to be seen if the place will suffer the cocktail party effect, if so, the solution is a big sign ‘speak quietly’.
Happy New Year
A sustainable new year
Read more.Some new year links, courtesy of a colleague at Heritage Declares.
- What if Old Buildings Are Greener Than New Ones? https://slate.com/business/2021/12/tulip-embodied-carbon-sustainability-old-buildings.html
- SPAB case study- air source heat pumps https://www.spab.org.uk/news/building-month-st-mary-annunciation-beaminster
St Mary’s Wimbledon
A planning application has been lodged for two new parsonage houses for St Mary’s Church Wimbledon. The site is within a conservation area and next to the Grade II listed churchyard wall of St Mary’s church which dates from at least the 11th century and possibly earlier, grade II* listed. The development will provide two new highly sustainable houses accessed from a garden courtyard, and improvements to the pedestrian route leading to the church from the south.
Read less.St Mary’s church Wimbledon – new houses at 3 Arthur Road
New parsonages for St Mary’s Church Wimbledon – public consultation
Read more.A public consultation was held on 24 November 2021 for a proposed scheme for two new houses in a conservation area at the top of Wimbledon hill designed to be parsonages for the parish of St. Mary. This follows a previous consultation and pre-application consultation with the local planning authority.
Read less.Appeal success at Fairlight, Sussex
A high standard of architecture on a difficult site
Appeal success at Colliers Wood for a new housing scheme on brownfield land
Read more.Appeal success for nine new flats at a prominent site in Colliers Wood, SW London. MBA making a difference on a local difficult-to-develop site. The inspector said this about the design:
“An interesting and thoughtful design with significant architectural quality. It would provide a varied and careful interplay of volumes and materials on an awkward site that might otherwise be unattractive. ..The redevelopment … could create a marker for a change in the nature of the townscape, at the approach to Colliers Wood Town Centre…. The north elevation [facing an under-developed site] would represent a powerful element in the streetscene. … The aim of allowing for future development of the petrol station site is sensible and practical …it could have made the north elevation very unprepossessing… [the] design addresses these concerns… [It] would be deeply modelled (allowing for future “lightwells”) and it would incorporate carefully designed brickwork and materials detailing, in order to provide visual interest in views towards the site from the north. It does achieve a high standard of architecture on a difficult site and it would comply with national and local policies that are intended to encourage good standards of architectural design… I have concluded that the project would provide a well-designed new building in a significant location on a main approach to Colliers Wood Town Centre.”
Read less.Harrow Rackets
Rackets – the game
Read more.Our new Rackets court at Harrow School is working well. A rackets court is one of the most testing technical projects in architecture, the hard, black, playing surface, designed to create its own thermal cracks is good, the subtle underfloor heating, the gallery sight lines, the natural light, and the soft wrapping to the gallery handrail is in place so that a stray hard, white, 120 mph ball, if the protective netting is drawn back, is less likely to cause injury. In the successful delivery of this project we were privileged to get the advice of Howard Angus a Wyckehamist and former Rackets champion, a well as John Eaton, Rackets pro at Harrow who has inspired a generation of quick witted players.
Read less.In flight
A work-in-progress shot of a pandemic resilient arts centre we are designing in an inner city location in London. More soon.