After years mouldering as a roofless, burnt-out shell following a devastating fire, Sheerness Dockyard Church in Kent has been restored into an award-winning business incubation centre, meeting rooms and events space – with a flexible, sensitive and intuitive lighting scheme to match.
By Mark Sutton Vane
We at Sutton Vane Associates are immensely proud of the fact that Sheerness Dockyard Church in Kent was last year named UK Project of the Year by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and, this year, has now won the RIBA South East Award, Building and Project Architect of the Year, and Conservation Award.
The Grade II* listed former church dates back to 1828 and was originally designed by George Ledwell Taylor, surveyor to the Admiralty and a distinguished architect. It has, quite literally, risen from the ashes, after being devastated by a fire in 2001.
The tower acted like a chimney and sucked up what was a roaring inferno that totally gutted the building. From having been a roofless, burnt-out ruin for many years, it has now however been transformed into an amazing community facility, inspired largely by the drive and commitment of Will Palin, son of actor Michael.
The hugely sympathetic and carefully-focused restoration, complete with flexible meeting rooms and an events space, was led by Hugh Broughton Architects, with Martin Ashley Architects in the conservation role. It was completed in 2023, and we provided the lighting design.
Members of the Isle of Sheppey’s large local community were consulted throughout the design phase and called upon to provide skills and labour during construction. The building also provides a permanent venue for the display of elements of the great Sheerness Dockyard model which dates from the construction in the early 19th century. Critically, the colony of 15,000 ‘Sheerness scorpions’ that occupy the perimeter walls of the dockyard were protected during the construction.
The works were made possible by National Lottery heritage funding matched by other sources, and have merited the building’s removal from Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register. They involved the stabilisation and restoration of surviving masonry walls, with the reinstatement of the original parapets, lost in the late nineteenth century.
The tower, which was in too perilous a state to repair in situ, was totally dismantled and reconstructed. The original 1828 roof profile was also reinstated.
STRUCTURALLY CHALLENGING
One of the first big problems with the whole thing was that, when they started analysing it, inside there are all these fantastic cast-iron columns. While they were all still standing, it turned out many of them had been damaged by the heat of the fire.
So they couldn’t be relied on for structural bearing any more across the 18m span. Therefore, the space is now supported on single-span composite trusses, with the columns now simply decorative. This made the whole project much more challenging structurally.
We got the commission to light both the exterior and interior, working of course to quite a tight budget. The way we therefore approached the whole thing was to be as economical and loose-fit as possible, while still delivering a project that looks great.
To, first, run through the different elements of the building, ambient lighting in the café is provided by retro-style decorative pendants. The beautiful brick walls are then revealed by graze lighting, using concealed, narrow-beam linear strips. Additional functional lighting then illuminates the counter.
In the portico area, the five tall round-headed windows have all been lit, with lighting from inside making the church feel active and in use. The columns are silhouetted against the lit surface behind the columns.
For the main entrance, lighting in the glazed entrance lobby is activated by a motion sensor, with two miniature downlights recessed in the ceiling. Ambient lighting is then provided by simple and elegant ceiling-mounted medium beam downlights.
Wall-washer downlights highlight the existing brickwork on the north side. Meeting rooms are, again, illuminated by retro-style decorative pendants with low glare optic. Within the ‘contemplation space’, general lighting is provided by track-mounted spots located at high level.
RED-FINISHED PENDANTS
In the various breakout spaces, simple and elegant red-finished pendants have been suspended above the tables, while the ceilings are illuminated by a soft wash of light, using long runs of diffuse strip lights concealed on top of the ceiling beams. Track-mounted spots with different beam angles provide general lighting to the ground and first floor.
The front and sides of the tower are illuminated, again, by spotlights suitable for outdoor use, located at high level. The lantern at the entrance gate had gone missing, so a replacement was built and installed.
The whole façade behind the four-column portico is lit incredibly cost-effectively. There is a linear light tucked away in the ceiling which nicely floods the back wall and throws the four columns into silhouette.
The lighting then shows off their lovely Ionic ‘ears’ at the top. That linear also doubles up as the emergency lighting, as it is a point of final exit. We made everything work extra hard to be as cost-effective as possible so, for example, the lights from the inside also highlight the line of five circular-top windows.
Finally, when it came to illuminating the tower – where naturally we wanted to draw attention to its fine architecture – this has been lit (using the lowest possible levels of light) with hidden light fittings so that by day no fittings are visible.
The tower has become a real beacon for that part of Sheerness; it can be seen from the high street. So it was really nice to be able to highlight with lighting and be able to say ‘your church is back’. It was again very simple: four low-wattage spots aimed precisely at the tower to avoid light spill. The lights on the roof are also easily accessible so if they do ever need to be maintained, it is quite easy to do.
FLEXIBLE SPACE
The ambition was to achieve very flexible light for the way everything is going to be used in the space. It is going to be a co-working, flexible space for business incubators in that area. It is to encourage young, businesses to set up and do well.
Reflecting on the project as a whole, probably the main challenge that needed to be overcome was keeping the whole project both flexible and zoned. Each meeting room, for example, has its own control panel; and you can adjust the lighting to different levels of brightness. The pendants are simple but work very nicely and give exactly the right lux necessary on the working space.
The lighting that skims down the Georgian brickwork was again quite simple to do, but it was all about picking up the edges of all the rooms. Because it was such a shell to start with, and so much has had to be added that is new – such as the new ceiling – attaching fixtures wasn’t as much of a challenge as you might normally have in a heritage space. The linears that shine down the wall are all fixed to a single new line, for example.
One headache was, when you look back through the big arch – essentially when you are standing above what was what originally the altar – during the design the plan was that all the first-floor balconies would include a series of bright orange ‘pods’ to work from.
We designed the lighting with that in mind but then quite late on it was decided not to have the pods and make the space more flexible and open. But by that stage of course our lighting was well underway.
So, while it was not a problem to ditch the lights that were due to go into the pods, we were suddenly left with a space where we no longer had a lot of the working light, which was going to be inside each individual pod. We were left with spots on tracks designed to illuminate the circulation spaces between the pods, and accentuate the pods from below.
It still works but has, in truth, ended up being a slightly unusual form of ‘work space’ lighting. Everyone is nevertheless very happy with it. It’s just not probably what we would have done for a flexible workspace if we had been starting from scratch.
CELEBRATING THE SPACE
What, finally, are our takeaways or learning points from a project like this?
First, keep it as flexible as you can. Second – and this I feel applies to all projects, but heritage projects particularly – you need to think beyond the lighting just being functional.
Of course it has to be functional too, but it has to help the building work; to be the space it is supposed to do. At the same time, of course, you’re working with this fantastic heritage building so it has to be about celebrating it and showing it off.
For instance, we spotlighted each nodule on each cast-iron column so they really stand out and tell everybody ‘this is an amazing building’. You want to be celebrating the historic story of the space.
Mark Sutton Vane is director ofSutton Vane Associates
This is an abridged version of the article that appears in the October edition of Lighting Journal. To read the full article, simply click on the page-turner to your right.
Image: The stairway, showing a range of colour temperatures, from warm white to cooler daylight coming in down the stairs. Sutton Vane Associates
