The bespoke nature of our products mean we often work with buildings or homeowners who have very particular requirements for their property, and we’re equally happy producing work for both individual homes and much larger estates. In the past we’ve helped developers to reinstate large runs of railings around London townhouses and to create balconies and Juliet balconies for a variety of homes. For The Mansion at Sundridge Park, a Grade I Listed property in Bromley, we were asked to create a double flight exterior spiral staircase that would fit seamlessly within an inner courtyard surrounded by luxury apartments.
Set amongst sweeping grounds designed by the famed landscape architect, Humphry Repton, the current mansion building was designed by John Nash in the late 18th Century in the style of a renaissance temple. The Park served as a grand family home for over 100 years before being converted into a hotel in 1905. In 2014, the award-winning developers, City & Country, purchased the property and it has now been converted into 22 exceptional apartments.
City & Country have built their reputation around an ability to transform listed and historic buildings into character-filled homes. This requires meticulous attention to all details within the conversion, ensuring the finished homes are truly of the highest standards. For The Mansion at Sundridge Park, they required a spiral staircase for a rear inner courtyard, providing owners with direct access to apartments on the first and second floors.
Project architects, Shaw and Jagger, first created a digital visualisation of the staircase they needed, showing how they envisioned the orientation of the staircase and how it would connect to the upper level walkways.
Following a tendering process, City & Country chose British Spirals & Castings to craft the cast aluminium staircase.
“We looked at a number of options before finding British Spirals & Castings. They were very responsive, quickly sending us a selection of samples, and we were confident that they could craft a staircase which fitted with our vision and could be tailored to the dimensions of the courtyard space”
Nick Racey, Design Manager, City & Country
Unlike the highly decorative front façade of the building, the inner courtyard is more austere with simple lines but the same high quality craftmanship and materials. For these reasons, our diamond pattern treads were chosen for the 41 rise staircase.
In keeping with the mansion, the selected diamond pattern bridges the gap between the simplicity of the Georgian period and the more decorative Victorian-era metalwork. Its perforations are not only decorative but also allow light to pass through to the lower levels, water to drain and provide more traction for homeowners using the exposed staircase. Solid aluminium rises were selected along with four plain square profile spindles for each tread, creating a staircase that was distinctive but still in keeping with its surroundings.
As with all our projects, we first created CAD drawings based on careful site measurements. In this case we also needed to take account of junctions with the stone landings, which were crafted by stone masons, to ensure a seamless fit.
The made to measure elements for the 2083 mm diameter staircase were then cast at our specialist foundry, before being sent to our workshop to be refined, finished and delivered to the site. Throughout the work, we communicated closely with City & Country to ensure the staircase precisely met their requirements.
We found Richard and Antonia Harding very helpful with good lines of communication throughout the work. I would certainly use them again and certainly recommend to others.
Nick Racey, Design Manager, City & Country
The complete staircase now sits proudly amongst its fine surroundings, ensuring the owners can reach their properties in style.
If you are interested in a bespoke staircase, balustrade, balcony or other metalwork, take a look at our gallery then submit a quote request or get in touch.
