The Hall Place Restoration Project

As of 22nd October 2007 Hall Place is temporarily closed to the public as we begin work on the restoration of this very special house. The gardens will remain open throughout the project and our tourist information centre and a small shop will be open in the Lodge, just by the entrance to the car park on Bourne Road. Staff there will be happy to answer any questions. Our telephone numbers will remain the same – general enquiries 01322 526574.

We still plan to run our outside events while the house is closed, including Easter activities and our late May bank holiday event. Details of these will be available from the Lodge and here.

This major restoration and development project is made possible by generous support from the Heritage Lottery Fund and Bexley Council, and charitable trusts and foundations, as well as the support of our visitors through your donations.

We will be conserving the external fabric of the house and refurbishing and improving the interior. We will be making much more of the house accessible to the public, and opening up the central courtyard. Inside the house, new displays will help visitors to learn about the house’s history, and see for the first time many of the fascinating objects in Bexley’s museum collection. We will also have space to welcome touring exhibitions, and to continue our very successful programme of contemporary art exhibitions.

In the grounds we will be building a light and airy new single storey extension to the stable block, behind the Jacobean Barn restaurant. This will be our new visitor centre including a café for our visitors, a wonderful new gallery space for art exhibitions, and an education centre for practical sessions, as well as a shop and tourist information centre.

A new landscaped entrance from the car park will lead visitors through the gardens and the new visitor centre to the south terrace and the main house entrance. The architects on the project are Thomas Ford and Partners and Hutton Construction are the main contractors.

Regular progress reports will go up on notice boards and on our website. We expect that the project will be complete by late summer 2008. If you’d like to become a Friend of Hall Place and support the project, please ask at the shop in the Lodge. Friends receive regular newsletters during the project as well as an invitation to our opening celebrations.

The Project in detail

The Trust has been working for the last four years on a long overdue programme of restoration and development works for Hall Place. We are delighted to have secured a Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £2m, and this, along with Council support and grants from trusts and foundations, means that it looks as though we are finally able to go ahead.

The project involves restoration of the historic house and the opening up of much more space within the house to the public, enabling for the first time extended display of the Bexley museum collection, as well as three exciting new educational galleries, for schools as well as for individual visitors, with lively displays on the history of the house, life on the estate, and daily life in Tudor times. The grounds round the house will be re-landscaped and a new visitor centre will be built adjacent to the stable block by the river providing an education suite, café and proper visitor reception. The plans include three spaces for showing contemporary art, one of which will be a large new purpose built gallery.

We hope that work will start at the end of October and be finished in summer 2008. The house will be closed to the public during the works, but there will still be a shop and tourist information centre on site so that visitors can come and see how the project is going and find out about what’s going on. The gardens will remain open.

The illustration gives an artist’s impression of the new visitor centre.

We already have 95% of the funding on this project – we have £280,000 left to raise. We know how much Hall Place means to the local community and we are sure we can count on the support of our visitors.

You can help in three ways.

When you next come and see us, you can help by buying our badge ‘Long Live Hall Place’ for a minimum donation of £1.

Or you can sign up as a Friend of Hall Place. A subscription of £20 will entitle you to updates on the project while it’s on, and an invitation to a celebration when the works are completed, as well as a discount in the airy riverside café for the first six months of opening. Please email us and we’ll send you a form, or fill one in when you’re next at Hall Place.

Or you can donate online at justgiving.com, and if your donation is over £20 we’ll get in touch to sign you up as a Friend.

Every donation will be a huge help to us in making sure that we can at last give Hall Place the care and attention it deserves, and show the marvellous Bexley museum collection to the local community, as well as expanding our popular events education and exhibition programmes.