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The heritage former Magistrates Court – transformed!

The transformation of the Former Magistrates' Court is Kidderminster town centre is now complete, and the resulting Old Court is open for business. The renovation of the new facility, commissioned and managed by Wyre Forest District Council has restored and maximised the potential of the whole site as Kidderminster’s business and creative hub.

The impressive building now provides 1,800 sqm of high-quality office and event space available to rent, alongside county wide innovation projects newly installed into the building.  There are three floors accessed by a lift which offer individual workspaces, shared kitchen, event spaces, meeting rooms and kitchen, shower and toilet facilities. The former court chamber itself is now a large light, bright conference and meeting room, with seating capacity for 120 people.

The transformation of the Old Court is intended to play a key role in renewing and reshaping Kidderminster town centre, developing a highly visible gateway building whilst re-purposing a significant historic asset.

Front elevation of grand red brick building with landscaped gardens in front
The Old Court, front view

Thanks to the restoration project, the outside public space has also been enhanced, providing a pedestrian route through town as well as offering a small children’s play area.

The redevelopment of this site provides a critical element for the long-term vision by supporting Kidderminster’s economic and cultural offer - a home for creative and digital industries - helping to drive growth and contribute to future sustainability.

The transformation of the Old Court and Weaving Sheds has been possible thanks to funding through the Future High Streets Fund (FHSF) – the former government’s funding initiative to transform struggling high streets. Kidderminster was awarded £20.5 million from this fund. The announcement was made on 26 December 2020.

The Weaving Sheds area of the site will be open in Spring 2025.

View the design plans

History of the building

The Old Court is a Grade II listed building designed in the Queen Anne Revival style by the architect J G Bland of Birmingham and built between 1878-1879 for R J Willis, a company known for making Brussels carpets. In 1883 the premises were sold to Woodward, Grosvenor and Company and used as their main offices and showroom. The adjacent weaving sheds appear to have been extended at this time. (Historic England)

In 1971 the building and weaving sheds were sold to the borough council, and part of the main building was converted to house the Magistrates' Court with the remaining premises used as office accommodation for various council departments. The weaving sheds to the rear became a covered market until the mid-1990s. The Magistrates Court moved to new premises in mid-2000s. (Historic England)

There is a small public landscape area opposite the south west frontage of the main building - Coronation Gardens - which was created in 1952.

The restoration of the former Magistrates' Court in Kidderminster.

Commentary by Aidan Ridyard - Burrell Foley Fischer Architects and Urban Designers.

Film by Front Row Films.  

Interested in letting a space at The Old Court?

If you would like more information about letting a space in the Old Court, please contact our letting agent (GJS Dillon) by emailing either Roy Wilkes (roywilkes@gjsdillon.co.uk) or Jorge Bray (jorgebray@gjsdillon.co.uk).

Commentary by Aidan Ridyard of BFF Architects:

The Former Magistrates Court in Kidderminster is a fascinating building because it’s really the last of the carpet factories surviving in the town. It was probably the last one built at the very end of the 19th Century and has survived when the others have disappeared.  Now we have an opportunity to re-imagine it as a hub for the creative industries in Kidderminster at the beginning of the 21st century.

It’s lived as a market hall, a Magistrates Court and has done a whole series of things and now its about trying to find what’s innate at the core of the building and that’s what we want to celebrate in the new project as we move forward.

The vision for the new project is very much how we can work with the existing building and use that as the discipline and where that needs help we put new interventions into it, supplement it and make it do what we need it to do.

So within the existing building we’ve got a fascinating brick structure which is the original carpet factory’s administrative block fronting the street, behind which is an iron framed roof which is the carpet factory itself and the whole site is set into the topography cutting in with a series of retaining walls, plateauing the site and then stepping down so we end up with a south facing building overlooking the town itself.

Our challenge is how we can open that up and celebrate that south facing site of the building and make it into a proper public fronted hub complex integrating it into the public realm outside and bringing it into the weaving sheds which are behind us on the other side of this block.

The weaving sheds on the north side of the site are where the carpets were originally made. Materials would have been brought through this archway and bought into the weaving sheds behind me and made, then taken up the road to the railway station and distributed around the world.

Those waving sheds are an incredibly flexible part of the site. There is about half an acre of them.  What we want to do is make them into the flexible heart of the building, so they will house performance spaces, work spaces, and it will be thing space where everything links to. The café and social areas will use it and it becomes the glue that holds the whole complex together in the future.

The public realm on the south side of the building really needs to connect to the weaving sheds inside theme, so actually making those connections, we have a whole series of historic brick archways which we can re-use to re-establish those connections and then at the end of the building opening it up so there is a visible public connection so we join public realm to the heart of the site so they work much more in tandem rather than being separated as they have been for the last 100 year or so.

By doing that, this public realm gets annexed by the functions in the building, so the creative industries based here begin to spin out and actually get that connection with the communities which they serve.

We’re very excited to be working on the project here at the former Magistrates Court in Kidderminster because it really is a classic example of how we can make historic buildings work again for the 21st Century and create what we call sustainable regeneration. And that’s not just sustainability with how it works with the environment, which it does do, we’re using a historic building in a creative way, but its sustainability in terms of what it does for the economics of the area and for the community that it serves. And it’s that view of holistic sustainability which is what we think projects like this absolutely exemplify and why they are such interesting things to be involved with. They create such fascinating ways to actually re-energise the community and re-integrate a historic asset into it with a really positive mission.

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