The Boilerhouse Project | Studio DuB

The Boilerhouse Project

What is that? An art gallery air lifted from Tokyo? An oversized Tony Cragg sculpture? An outsized concrete chemistry set? The good folk of Melrose could be forgiven for wondering as they round the corner of a leafy road on the outskirts of the picturesque mediaeval Abbey town. But it is a light industrial building by Peter Womersley that hoves into view, standing on the perimeter of a former Victorian psychiatric hospital. This concrete building, completed in 1978, won the Financial Times award for Industrial Buildings in that year (o, bring back the award, FT!), and what’s more, Womersley also remodelled areas of the Victorian building, designing a chapel, restaurant and public area for the most forward thinking, liberal institution of its times, at the forefront of psychiatry and practice. When the hospital, a standard Victorian arrangement, was converted into flats in the early 2000s, the Peter Womersley boiler house was left with a question mark hanging over its head, until I visited it with Gordon Duffy of Studio DuB and he later dreamt up a scheme to give it new life. I have been researching Womersley’s life and work and it had become common to drive or cycle around the UK, without a postcode as a guide, tracking down Wom buildings, instantly recognisable when you see them. But even I was surprised when a few weeks later I saw overmarked plans in Gordon’s office for change of use to residential.

Not long after this, Gordon nominated the boiler house for Listing (together with the Gala Faireydean Stadium) in an effort to protect the buildings for the future, and subsequently they were Listed by Historic Scotland in a general review of the work of Peter Womersley, putting him more firmly amongst the canon of architects including Morris and Steedman, and Gillespie Kidd and Coia. Peter Womersley really was out on a limb, completing work that practically no other architect could dream or dare to at the time, from his rural base in the former orchard of a monastery at Gattonside, a tiny settlement outside Melrose. The buildings that have been remembered the best so far relate to his client and friend Bernat Klein, whose house he completed at the beginning of his architectural career and his textile design studio towards the end. But Womersley, from his tiny and relatively remote office began to break out of the residential mould and won a competition for Roxburgh county offices and found a patron in the NHS, completing the unit at the Western General, the fascinating surgery at Kelso and a rigorous block, Herdmanflat in, Haddington.

Back to Dingleton, flick to a few years later and Studio DuB now have control of the building, a Listed Building Consent and Planning Consent for 5 residential units, the angular concrete forms of the coal hoppers expressed in the living rooms of 3 of them. When Gordon and I presented the scheme to the AHSS, we showed our slideshow and told the fuller story and holding our breath, let out a sigh of relief when it was received with warmth and interest, showing that the time has come to cherish the sculptural works of that era and not let them turn into relics or ruins. The scheme uses the structural bays set out by the three coal hoppers to delineate three units, and they depend on a new glazed area to the south, away from the road side, which uses the geometry of the building in section to bring the light to the north side of the building, to illuminate the living space. The loading bay to the east, becomes a different type of unit, modifying the silhouette of the original building to fill in the gap where coal would have been offloaded, and the upper floor above the hoppers becomes the largest unit, with the clearest views to the Eildon Hills. The intention is to re-use the chimney as a flue for woodburning stoves in each unit. Gordon has designed a built-in “snug” around each of the the stove areas, to act as the sort of hearth I would like if I lived out in the Borders, in freshly invigorated concrete splendour. And not to forget, the Waverley line which is due to be complete in June 2015 reinstates the rail connection from Edinburgh to Galashiels (scrapped by the infamous Beeching report), and it will have a new station Tweedbank, barely 10 minutes drive from this site.

STOP PRESS: these units are available to purchase, as of now, off plan! For more information, contact [email protected]