SHH designed a new restaurant space in the grounds of one of the UK’s most historic sites – Hatfield House: the childhood home of Queen Elizabeth I and listed as one of the ten ‘treasure houses of England’. An existing tea-room for visitors to the house was run and administrated by the estate as an additional revenue stream, but was small, very basic in format and not particularly well-presented. A new design was sought as part of a major overall master plan for the house and grounds initiated by Lord Salisbury.
The brief was to create a space with year-round and day-long appeal, to service visitors to the house and grounds, tenants of local office space and even destination visitors from the locality, where good eateries are in relatively short supply. SHH radically altered the space plan to create a clean and bright 2-storey offer, including a roof terrace at first floor level.