50 acre estate - Accessible Design

At 50-acre Cotswold Manor House Estate & Gardens, I redesigned not only to cover all types of disabled access but also to make it an inviting and inspiring place for everyone to visit.

I designed the smooth and gently sloping paths and trackways to be safe and compliant with the UK Disability & Safety Regulations. This was really interesting researching materials which would fit in with the 18th Century stonework and not impose upon it. Luckily I discovered Harris & Bugg Studios were in the process of creating one of the fabulous Horatio’s Gardens for Chelsea 2024 and developing their own surfaces from recycled materials that can be color-graded to fit in with the site and perfectly smooth for wheelchairs. Charlotte Harris very generously said I could use the Eco-terrazzo (they will have patented it by now) for my college project. Genius!

The site has a Sculpture Trail that takes you around the lake and wider estate, to the woodlands and Fairy Island Nature Trail, which has its own more detailed MLP. Fairy Island is surrounded by the river Windrush. It has two bridges, taking you onto raised and dipping sensory trackways, with a fully accessible hide looking out over the lake and further afield. The raised trackways take you gently up into the lower tree canopy, while the dipping trackway takes you on a subterranean journey where you are face height with the undergrowth layer. This I hoped could give visitors a really immersive, up close to nature experience , which a lot of people with disabilities are often unable to access. The entire estate has handrails, with braille information, a range of accessible resting spots, smooth paths and trackways throughout, and of course, wheelchair and scooter-accessible gates.

Here, I’m including both Master Layout Plans and the working-out pages for the highly complex paths and trackways systems. Also the Mood boards and sketches for actualizing the concepts and designs for both (Images used within the mood boards are not my own and are simply for the ideas stage of designs). The MLP’s are A00 and A0, so the image size was ginormous, far too big a file to post on the gallery here. So I’ve had to reduce the resolution. But I’m very happy to send the Images to anyone interested in taking a closer look in more detail.