Canynges Society Annual Gazette 2016

Winning Scheme
presents compelling
solution
Purcell, the Bristol-based architectural
practice, presented the winning
scheme in the recent competition
which sought conceptual ideas for
the development of the church
precinct in the coming years
and which would form the
basis of a Heritage Lottery
bid to raise funds to
realise the scheme.
Dan Talkes, Senior
Architect at Purcell,
outlines the inspiration
and thinking behind their
ideas for this exciting scheme.
In 1574, Elizabeth I declared St Mary Redcliffe to be ‘The Fairest,
goodliest and most famous parish church in England’. To coincide
with the 450th anniversary of this statement, the St Mary Redcliffe
Project seeks to undo the post-war planning decisions that have
isolated the church, to repair its context and to relocate the church
at the physical, spiritual and social heart of its community.
Purcell are delighted to have been selected to assist the church in
realising this vision. As Dan Tyndall has said, ‘We searched across
the globe but found our architects around the corner’. Indeed,
working from studios in King Street, Bristol, we have a long-standing
involvement in Redcliffe, members of our team having lived, gone
to school and worshipped in the area. Two of our team, Rob Gregory
and Dan Talkes, have also tutored architectural projects in Redcliffe,
at Bath University and The Welsh School of Architecture in
Cardiff, respectively, and Rob was also a key member of the Redcliffe
Futures Group.
We therefore bring to the project an intellectual understanding of
the church’s historic importance and a personal understanding of
both the particular challenges of Redcliffe and the unique potential
of this project to repair not only the church’s physical context but
also to embed it within the aims and aspirations of its community.
Our approach is rooted in history. Through analysis, we peeled back
the post-war layers to understand how radically the church’s setting
has changed and particularly how the dual carriageways of Redcliffe
Way and Redcliffe Hill have isolated the church, creating dual faultlines.
Our concept seeks to repair these by creating new ‘stitches’:
© Richard Carmen
first an east-west stitch that connects the Redcliffe Caves, Redcliffe
Wharf, the Quaker Burial Ground, the Hermitage, Chatterton
House and, ultimately, Temple Meads, to reintegrate the church
in its historic context: then, a north-south stitch that links the
Redcliffe Children’s Centre, St Mary Redcliffe and Temple School,
Somerset Square, The Ship Inn, Pump Lane and St Thomas Street
to forge a new connection between the more affluent communities of
north Redcliffe and the relative deprivation of south Redcliffe. These
stitches consciously unite not on the church’s crossing, but rather on
a new community garden generated to its north-side.
Located on the exact footprint of the former north-side churchyard,
and adopting the ‘lost’ historic alignments that became instrumental
to the form of our proposals, this community garden reestablishes
the church’s mediaeval enclosure. This was critical to our concept
since, as residents of Redcliffe, we had all experienced just how
experientially threatening it could be to access the church, its great
beauty and near cathedral-like scale, whilst undeniably contributing
to its significance, also presenting a potential barrier to its principal
function as a parish church.
However, during the competition process, we surrounded ourselves
with historic images of Redcliffe and, from these, we noted how,
until relatively recently, the church was seen not in toto, but rather
through a series of tantalising, more human-scale encounters that
had the potential to encourage more personal engagement.
Indeed, our proposal is underpinned by the desire to increase the
physical, social and spiritual accessibility of St Mary Redcliffe,
4