The Main Offices Project involves the repair and conversion of a range of three Listed Grade II buildings at the former Chatterley Whitfield Colliery, Stoke-on-Trent, a Scheduled Monument. The buildings provide 1,250 square metres of new workspaces for local businesses and community groups, and facilities for skills training and local educational use.

Funding for the project has been received from the European Regional Development Fund, with match-funding provided by English Partnerships under the National Coalfields Programme.

The design brief was carefully developed to respect both the integrity of the existing building fabric and historic significance of the internal spaces, whilst sensitively introducing new areas and functions to allow an appropriate new use to be implemented.

The Main Offices Project, combined with improvements to the existing site access road, forms the first phase of a wider Regeneration Masterplan to be implemented at Chatterley Whitfield.

The Main Offices were originally constructed in 1934 Whitfield and were purpose-built for housing the clerical staff. They were subsequently extended to include the Wages Offices, with construction of the Laboratory block in 1935 completing the three-building complex. The colliery ceased production in 1977.

The Main Offices are good examples of the inter-war English Art Deco style and of the type of welfare buildings built during the peak period of production in the nationalised coal industry.

Works to the buildings included significant repair to the original concrete frame, roof decks and brickwork walls, total replacement of the original metal framed windows and rooflights on a like-for-like basis, re-configuration of internal spaces to provide more flexible working areas and construction of a new external canopy with associated external landscaping to provide a useful outdoor training amenity. The building is heated by biomass-fuelled boiler plant, as a demonstration project for the wider ambitions for sustainability and use of renewable energy sources across the site as part of FCB Studios wider regeneration masterplan.

Client: English Heritage

Construction value: £1,900,000

Completion: April 2006