Greenhouse Café

LOCATION: Melrose, Scottish Borders

CLIENT: Milestone Garden and Leisure

CONTRACTOR: Cruikshanks and Sons Ltd.

The Vision

The clients ambitions involved the careful restoration and adaption of these C-Listed buildings in the Melrose Conservation Area to repair damaged historic fabric, carefully remove previous, unsympathetic work and create a vibrant, hospitable space filled with natural light that could be opened up to the town and nearby Scheduled Monument of Melrose Abbey.

The Solution

CSY worked closely with the local conservation officer and Historic Environment Scotland to establish a series of acceptable design principles that would achieve the clients brief without compromising the contribution of the existing buildings to the Melrose Conservation Area.

Listening closely to the client’s needs, early consideration was given as to how both buildings could be successfully connected in a manner that would also allow occupants to benefit from views to the Abbey. The solution was to propose a contemporary, glazed intervention between the two historic buildings that would remain concealed from the principal street frontage.

The Conclusion

The buildings’ relationship with Buccleuch Street was maintained and broadly unaltered by the main façade being brought back to its original intention with the reinstatement of an original first floor window. A sensitively designed ramp and new stone setts to the street frontage improved access and provided a positive contribution to the public realm.

Internal reconfiguration allowed the client to improve efficiencies to the various aspects of their business whilst the glazed link provided an elegant solution to connect both buildings, provide much-needed daylight and afford direct views to Melrose Abbey.

The Greenhouse Café is now a vibrant business, full of light and connected to the townscape of Melrose. It is part of the conservation town setting, but adds the considered, modern interior the clients desired when they approached CSY.