Park

Cafe

The Brief

Frome Town Council approached MJW Architects to establish a new café within Victoria Park as the cornerstone of their community regeneration initiative. The derelict Edwardian tea house presented both opportunity and challenge: whilst its prominent parkland setting offered exceptional potential as a community focal point, years of neglect had left the building in very poor condition. The brief required sensitive restoration that would respect the building’s heritage whilst creating a commercially viable, contemporary café operation.

Design Approach

The design concept centred on restoration rather than replacement, honouring the building’s original purpose as an Edwardian tea house. This sympathetic approach recognised the structure’s historic and architectural value to the park’s character, responding to its heritage significance through careful repair and enhancement rather than wholesale reconstruction.

The key architectural intervention involved replacing failed joinery with new timber folding doors and windows. This strategy dramatically improved the building’s relationship with its parkland context, creating generous openings that dissolve the boundary between interior and exterior. The folding door configuration allows the café to extend into the park during fine weather, maximising the building’s community function whilst enhancing its visual connection to Victoria Park.

Material selection prioritised authenticity and durability. Existing fabric—including stone and brick walls and the slate roof—was retained and restored, maintaining the building’s historic character. New interventions, particularly the timber joinery, were specified to complement rather than compete with the original architecture.

Technical Solutions

The project’s principal technical challenge involved providing adequate structural support for the exceptionally wide opening created by the new folding doors. The span requirements threatened to compromise both the architectural vision and structural integrity, requiring innovative engineering to reconcile aesthetic ambition with practical constraint.

The solution introduced a slender cast iron circular column at the centre of the opening. This elegant intervention provides essential load-bearing capacity for the roof structure above whilst maintaining the desired visual transparency. The column’s circular profile and cast iron materiality reference Victorian park architecture, creating a detail that feels both contemporary and contextually appropriate.

The Result

The restored pavilion now functions as a vibrant community café operated by Lotty Evans and Annie McCarthy of Balmoral Catering. Their track record running Frome’s Cheese and Grain café brought operational expertise that has established the venue as an integral part of the park’s social infrastructure.

The architectural transformation centres on the generous folding door system, which fundamentally reimagines the building’s relationship with Victoria Park. During clement weather, the façade opens completely, extending the café into the landscape and creating an animated threshold that draws park visitors inside. This flexibility extends to the building’s programming, with the space accommodating community events and Frome Festival activities alongside daily café operations.

The project’s success led to MJW Architects’ subsequent appointment for additional Frome Town Council commissions, including feasibility studies for the Town Offices and the Cheese & Grain building, demonstrating the client’s confidence in the practice’s ability to balance heritage sensitivity with functional requirements.