Oxford Castle Heritage Project

Oxford Castle Heritage Project

Oxford Castle

Oxford Castle Heritage Project
Architect: Architects Design Partnership LLP / Dixon Jones Ltd / Jestico Whiles / Panter Hudspith / Richard Griffiths Architects
Client: The Trevor Osborne Property Group / Oxfordshire County Council / Oxford Preservation Trust / South East England Development Agency / English Heritage
Awards: RIBA Award


This ambitious regeneration project is highly sustainable in that it brings back to life a collection of historic buildings, creating a designer hotel, restaurants, flats, an art gallery and a Heritage Interpretation Centre. The conversion of a castle and prison could have led to a Disney world of bling but instead it has been sensitively handled, so that the poignancy of the past is neither lost nor trivialised. All the buildings originally on the site were listed structures, most notably St George’s Tower. All have been carefully restored, with any new additions made apparent, rather than dressed up to look like the old. The new buildings by different hands, are contemporary in their design, detail and choice of materials.