London
Westminster School
Hawkins Brown
Procurement
Whitby Wood
CPW
Montagu Evans
Grant’s and College houses at Little Dean’s Yard form Phase 1 of a wider programme to support Westminster School’s move to fully co-educational boarding. Located within the Westminster Abbey and Parliament Square Conservation Area and the Palace of Westminster and Westminster Abbey World Heritage Site, the project sits at the intersection of global heritage significance and the daily life of a live school campus. The works focus on internal refurbishment and reconfiguration to create high quality boarding accommodation for girls, alongside essential upgrades to building services, circulation, accessibility and life safety.
We act as Project Manager and Quantity Surveyor for the refurbishment of both buildings. Our role is to provide clear leadership across programme, cost and quality, ensuring that modern requirements are met without compromising the architectural and historic value of the estate. We coordinate a specialist consultant team with extensive experience in heritage and education projects, bringing together architecture, engineering, planning, fire, acoustics and heritage advice into a coherent and deliverable strategy.
Grade I listed boarding houses refurbished
World Heritage Site context
conservation area setting
phased delivery strategy aligned with school terms
target for fully co-educational boarding across the wider estate
From inception through delivery, we guide the project through the complexities of a Grade I listed environment and a tightly constrained central London site. Holding both the Project Manager and Quantity Surveyor roles allows us to align design ambition with programme certainty and disciplined cost control from the outset. This integrated approach supports informed decision making, robust risk management and a procurement strategy that reflects the sensitivities of the buildings and their setting.
A defining challenge is the need to work within a live school environment. Access, storage and working hours are inherently limited, and continuity of boarding provision is essential. We have developed a phased delivery strategy that aligns construction activity with the School’s calendar, with works predominantly undertaken during summer periods. This approach allows accommodation to return to use between phases, minimising disruption to pupils, staff and the wider estate while maintaining momentum across the programme.
Both houses are of exceptional significance, and our approach is grounded in a clear heritage strategy that prioritises preservation, reversibility and legibility of change. Interventions are focused wherever possible on modern fabric or areas altered during the twentieth century, allowing the historic core of each building to remain intact and readable.
Where external or roof-level works are required, they are carefully considered to minimise visual impact and to protect the Outstanding Universal Value of the World Heritage Site. Upgrades to services, fire safety and environmental performance are integrated discreetly, ensuring the buildings remain resilient and fit for purpose for generations of pupils while respecting their historic character.
Grant’s House at 2 to 3 Little Dean’s Yard is a Grade I listed boarding house at the centre of the Westminster School estate. Our role is to manage a sensitive refurbishment that enhances student experience while preserving the building’s architectural integrity and setting.
The works include internal reconfiguration, comprehensive upgrades to mechanical and electrical services, installation of a new dry riser and a full internal refurbishment. The majority of intervention is concentrated within twentieth-century rear extensions and adjoining unlisted areas. Within the listed fabric, change is deliberately limited. Minor adjustments to the first-floor plan improve communal accommodation while retaining the legibility of the historic layout, and modern partitions and services are rationalised to improve safety, energy efficiency and long-term performance.
External works are confined to the rear and relate solely to modern fabric, ensuring that the principal elevations to Little Dean’s Yard remain unchanged. We have developed and managed a phased programme that enables Grant’s House to return to use between summer periods, supporting uninterrupted school operation while maintaining a heritage-led delivery approach.
College House at 4 Little Dean’s Yard is also Grade I listed, with interiors that largely date from post-war reconstruction. This provides greater scope for carefully considered adaptation while maintaining the building’s established institutional character.
The refurbishment focuses on improving circulation, safety and amenity through internal reconfiguration, upgraded bedroom layouts and enhanced shared facilities. Works include the replacement of a late twentieth-century staircase with a bespoke timber design, selective roof interventions such as new and replacement rooflights, installation of ventilation cowls and comprehensive upgrades to building services. New partitions and sanitary facilities are introduced within existing rooms, and a historic fireplace surround is sensitively relocated to enable functional change while preserving its contribution to the building’s significance.
Our role has been to manage these interventions within a highly sensitive heritage context, coordinating design development, controlling costs and aligning delivery with the School’s operational requirements. Particular care is taken with roof-level works to ensure that improvements to student experience are achieved without adverse impact on the wider historic setting.
