Nottingham Building Preservation Trust - Harry Johnson Award
The HopBarn is delighted to have been commended in the Nottinghamshire Building Preservation Trust's Harry Johnson Award. The award, which has been set up in honour of Henry Arthur Johnson (a founding member of the NBPT) has been awarded annually since 1989 and is awarded to 'the best design of a new building or the best restoration of an existing building within a village setting'.
The HopBarn was nominated due to the extensive restoration made to the original agricultural buildings (parts of which date back to the late 17th Century) and how, in keeping with the original building aesthetics, The HopBarn retains many of the original features.
The Nottingham Building Preservation Trust (NBPT) aims to protect, restore and enhance all historic buildings within Nottinghamshire. It was the significant historical importance of the original farm units that prompted the current farm Director's to seek an alternative use and away from farming. Years of agricultural abuse suffered by the buildings, as they were adapted from the drying of hops, to a milking parlour and dairy, to a piggery, milling house and grain store (amongst many others) inevitably left their toll (not to mention the amount of times the buildings had suffered at the hands of absent minded farm workers when driving tractors and trailers).
In 2010, a chance opportunity that allowed the farm to be diversified once again, freed up the original buildings and work began to slowly restore and protect the buildings whilst once again converting them for a different use, this time for music and the perforimng arts.
Of course; realising the vision of turning a group of dilapidated old farm buildings into a purpose developed studio space required specialist expertise, and The HopBarn is hugely thankful and indebted to the team of builders, electricians, plumbers, carpenters and labourers who gave their time in helping to turn the vision into a reality.
Whilst The HopBarn was not in receipt of winning the overall award, partly due to its isolated location (we are not in a village); the commendation offers an enormous sense of recognition for the work achieved to date. This however is just the beginning and a long term ambition is to restore the remaining units that surround The HopBarn. There is still a lot of work to do, but look whats been achieved in 6 years!
To read more about the Nottingham Building Preservation Trust please follow the link below:
