Blunt’s Drove

Travellers’ Site

We were approached by Hastoe Housing Association to develop a brief for a derelict traveller’s site to be re-designed and brought up to current building standards.  The brief was to produce a robust, modern response to a controversial subject,  creating a sense of community amongst the complex interactions of the Gypsy and Romany community.

The concept was to create plots for 16 families each with a small private building or ‘anti-house’ to provide stand alone cooking, dining, bathing and clothes washing facilities adjacent to their caravan pitch.

We were initially asked to redesign the site to guidance from the Homes and Communities initiative. This design provided modern energy efficient simple buildings organised around a central ‘green’ area. The ‘anti house’ buildings were unconventional to suit their use and situation and included a central courtyard layout, air source heat pumps and rainwater harvesting. The design proved popular with consultations with the traveller community.

Budgets and needs change and so the scheme was modified to renovate existing outhouses on site, but also to allow for the expansion of the site to 32 plots with even further expansion if required.