National Trust
Hospitality design that communicates history
We partnered with the National Trust to refresh Calke Abbey’s café, restaurant and ticket office. Creating heritage-led spaces that tell the estate’s story while improving visitor flow, experience and commercial outcomes.
The Problem
We worked with the National Trust on several design projects for Calke Abbey; a Grade I listed country house estate set among 600 acres of countryside and gardens. Working alongside the internal Calke Abbey teams as well as National Trust appointed architects, we refurbished their on-site restaurant, and designed their new café and ticket office.
The Solution
Both the café and restaurant were designed using the heritage driven theme of the estate, with materials and colour palettes chosen to communicate the dramatic history of this National Trust property. Meanwhile, for the ticket office we used English Oak from the Calke Abbey Estate to build the furniture and applied the key theme branding to help tell the story of Calke over the years.
The Result
The result was an impressive improvement in their catering offering; we created a cosy yet functional Meanwhile, the ticket office design works to emotionally connect visitors with the Calke story, whilst enhancing the customer flow, reducing dwell time, increasing sales and recruiting new National Trust members.
Sector
Retail Design
