The former King Edward V11 Hospital is located near Midhurst, West Sussex, within the South Downs National Park. The main hospital buildings were designed in the 1920s by Percy Adams and Charles Holden. As well as these extensive listed buildings, the Gertrude Jekyll designed ‘therapeutic gardens’ are of considerable historic interest in their own right. Last used as a hospital in 2006, the site currently lies vacant and the buildings and gardens are subject to minimal maintenance.
LUC provided a range of services to the King Edward Estates Ltd to support proposals for restoration of the buildings and gardens to provide high quality residential accommodation and community facilities. LUC was represented in the design team as landscape architects and ecologists. A separate LUC team also undertook the Environmental Impact Assessment to accompany the planning application.
The final proposals take full account of the Environmental Impact Assessment and extensive consultation with statutory and non-statutory bodies. They include:
• Full restoration of the listed buildings and registered gardens.
• A minimum amount of enabling development within the estate.
• Enhancement of the wider landscape of the estate to improve visual amenity and ecology as part of the National Park.
• Introduction of new public footpaths and ecological mitigation and enhancement measures, including recreation of large scale heathland recreation, active management of the neglected woodland and several architect-designed free standing bat roosts.
