Windhill Estate, Doncaster

Client: BRE

Role: Architecture

The Windhill estate is a pre-war 1930s, housing estate built for coal miners on the outskirts of Doncaster.

PRP was commissioned to work with the BRE to address, in particular, the problems of the addition of ‘off-shoot‘ bathrooms in the late 1960s, but also to look at the issues involved with upgrading the thermal performance of each property. The study area consisted of approximately 200 mainly three bedroom semi-detached properties.

From a thermal efficiency viewpoint the houses of solid brick construction with no thermal insulation were in desperate need of improvement. However, structurally the properties were sound and not suffering from any major deterioration other than in the bathroom pods. None of the houses on the estate were connected to a gas network and each house relied on coal fires, a legacy of the coal mining heritage of the area, with a back boiler for hot water and central heating.

The houses on the estate are in need of modernisation and spatial reorganisation to improve living conditions, increase the variety of size of property available on the estate and improve the thermal efficiency of the fabric. The bathroom ‘off shoots’ were not deemed fit for use and all options propose the removal of these. Various extension options were proposed to ensure flexibility to enable the varying circumstances of space available on each plot and the current status of ownership of the properties to be taken into account. External cladding, new high performance windows and roof insulation were costed for every property. Additionally as part of the renovation appraisal, connecting each house to the gas grid was suggested as a gas mains with capacity is located adjacent to the site.