Centrepiece

Halifax’s Grade I listed Piece Hall is the sole survivor of the eighteenth century northern cloth halls and the centrepiece in the town’s regeneration.

Gillespies’ Warren Chapman looks back on the challenges and opportunities created by this vast open space – and the uniquely human skills needed to transform it.

The restoration of the Piece Hall has been one of the UK’s most significant and high profile heritage projects in recent years. An accessible 21st Century public space has been created, which has attracted some 1.6m visitors since it opened in 2017. With the re-imagining of the building’s central courtyard as a key component, its regeneration has positioned the building as a heritage landmark and visitor destination at the heart of Halifax’s civic and economic renaissance and is a catalyst for the development of the town’s new Cultural Quarter.

Built in 1779, the Grade I listed Piece Hall is the sole survivor of the great eighteenth century northern cloth halls. By 1815, the courtyard was being used as a venue for political meetings and public spectacles; the Victorian era saw it become home to a thriving fruit and vegetable market, a horse fair and community ‘sings’. By 1970 it was unused, in disrepair and, although designated as a Scheduled Ancient Monument, escaped demolition by a single vote in 1972.

In 2013 the Piece Hall transformation project was made possible by funding from Calderdale Council, with support from Heritage Lottery Fund, the Garfield Weston Foundation and Wolfson Foundation. Gillespies was commissioned as part of a multidisciplinary design team to transform the public realm within the courtyard of this Grade I listed building. With landscape design at the heart of the project, the reinvention of the courtyard and surrounding streets is the project’s defining feature and required sensitive, committed and imaginative landscape design and collaboration.

Gillespies’ challenge was to present a historically-sensitive landscape restoration, that transformed the square into a flexible and multifunctional 21st century public space. It was a brief designed to help attract new uses and activity, helping to save a vulnerable and nationally significant building.

Central to the project was an imaginative proposal to relandscape the 66,000 sq. ft. central courtyard to improve access and enable more flexibility. A new ‘town square’ for Halifax, it would be comparable with the great public squares of Europe. Whilst the design appears deceptively simple, the reality was extremely complex, requiring multidisciplinary collaborative working with the design team, client group and important stakeholders such as Historic England.

The Piece Hall restoration project has placed an accessible 21st Century public space at the heart of the town’s civic and economic renaissance

© Paul White / The Piece Hall Trust

By focusing restoration around the public courtyard, we have repositioned the Piece Hall into the heart of the town and created a place that has quickly become the focus for cultural, educational and civic events for the enjoyment of future generations.

Unsurprisingly – for those of us who have been involved in landscape restoration projects – the uniqueness and age of building gave rise to a number of particular challenges. Prior to construction, the discovery of a Georgian graveyard required the exhumation of over 200 skeletons. With a cross fall of some 3.5 metres across the square, integrating slopes across the courtyard sensitively into the building colonnade – whilst creating a large level central events space – provided a particular challenge.

Gillespies adapted levels to define and orientate public accessibility in and around the square; we introduced cascading water features, granite steps, ramps and street furniture to create a large usable central space for events and festivals. The new design meets modern standards for inclusive design and – for the first time in the history of the Piece Hall – the central space has been excavated to produce a large level plaza.

To better connect the square into the fabric of the town centre and to boost footfall across the space, a new gateway has been created through the east wing of the building. Doing so has provided a new pedestrian link between the town centre, relocated Halifax Library and the railway station. Gillespies has also designed the public realm around the new library to seamlessly connect it with the Piece Hall and ensure a coherent character along a key town centre route.

The central courtyard’s reimagining takes into account a cross fall of 3.5m, integrating slopes with the building colonnade, creating a large events space

© Paul White / The Piece Hall Trust

Considerable attention to construction detailing has required close collaboration with both the main contractor and stone supplier.

Public spaces are laid in natural stone, predominantly sandstone and granite, with differing unit sizes used to articulate different areas and functionality. Feature banding runs across the central space and aligns with columns located on the restored building, to provide a geometry that is harmonious with the surrounding architecture.

Bespoke water features attract children and adults and provide a sense of ‘movement’ in the formality of the space. They also tell the story of the importance of water in the textile history of the Piece Hall, with cascade steps representing the moorland stream sources used in cloth manufacture and formal rills show how water power was used in mechanisation in the mills.

Lighting has been successfully integrated into the public realm. But, perhaps more importantly, the nighttime economy is now supported by and attracted into this reimagined building. New lighting in the floor, facades and furniture avoids the use of lighting columns, which would restrict how the space was used and wouldn’t be historically authentic.

The square has once again become a focus for cultural events

© David Millington/Gillespies

Yet our design for the central space also needed a different approach. The historic nature and importance of the building meant avoiding the temptation to provide too much colour and pattern within the centre of the large plaza area; it was important that the elegant classical elevations of the Piece Hall remained the most dominant visual element within the public realm. As a result, we located the water features to the edges of the space and kept the paving pattern very simple, responding only to the rhythm of the surrounding facades.

It’s very unusual for us to design a public realm of this scale without any planting. The Piece Hall public realm has to cater for events of many types and sizes and to successfully integrate planting into the space seemed problematic. The requirements for security, access and crowd movement meant that planting opportunities were extremely limited – we took the design decision to move away from our inherent desire to “green” the space, to avoid a fragmented and piecemeal approach to planting that may not be sustainable. Businesses occupying the units surrounding the plaza will require temporary planting as part of their retail fit out, which will add seasonal colour.

Collaboration was key to the project. With other design teams working on adjacent but separate projects, it was important to maintain a seamless link through the public realm. Gillespies led on this, making efforts to engage with others and resolve areas of conflicting detail, such as kerb widths and paving bonds.

Two way communication with the contractor also added another dimension. The contractor’s site manager suggested changes to the construction detail for stone steps in one particular area, based upon years of experience. We gladly accepted and this helped create an atmosphere of cooperation and respect on site.

Piece Hall’s security, access and crowd movement requirements limited planting opportunities, although businesses occupying the surrounding units add seasonal colour

© David Millington/Gillespies

The Piece Hall has won 12 design awards – most recently from the Natural Stone Federation for Best Landscape Project and was Highly Commended by the Landscape Institute in the 2018 awards. In 2017 it was the overall winner at the Historic England Angel Awards. Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber was quoted, saying: “The Piece Hall is a stunning example of urban renewal that should spur on the councils of every major city and town in Britain to do something similar. It is as if St. Mark’s Square in Venice has been deposited in West Yorkshire and puts Halifax on a par with major cities in Europe. The only word I can use to describe it is inspirational.”

Most importantly, successful regeneration has reinvented the building and its public space for the 21st century and brought The Piece Hall back into public use. Sensitive restoration has saved a vulnerable and nationally significant building and positioned the 238-year-old building for an active future as a multi-use commercial and cultural destination, with shops, bars, galleries and startup space for new business.

The Gillespies-designed courtyard provides the focus for this new chapter. It is an inspiring example of how our profession can breathe new life into our towns and cities by delivering beautiful and elegant people-centric public spaces.

Warren Chapman BA (Hons) Dip LA CMLI is an Associate Partner at Gillespies LLP.