Keele in Town, 53 Ironmarket Street Newcastle-under-Lyme
This project is Keele University’s commitment to improving the high street by renovating an 1886 building that has been vacant for the past 10 years.
53 Ironmarket is an existing building in Newcastle-under-Lyme town centre, which was purchased by Keele University in 2022.
Keele University aimed to renovate the property to provide a mixed-use facility, encompassing an Eatery, student learning and study spaces alongside a ‘Business Enterprise Hub’ which will support and upskill local businesses.
The renovation complements existing businesses, and in turn, hopes to bring additional footfall to the town centre.
The property has historically operated as a nightclub and a restaurant. The renovations have transformed a long-vacant building into a vibrant, multi-purpose space that enhances the high street.
The heart of this project is to forge relationships with the town and local community and harness the opportunity to provide better access to meeting spaces for people living in the local area.
Corstorphine & Wright played a key role in the project from inception to completion.
We served as Project Architect throughout Stages 0-3 and then Client Advisor from Stages 4-6. To shape the project, extensive stakeholder engagement was conducted with University staff, balancing the diverse needs and aspirations of future users.
The design team faced many different constraints & considerations throughout all stages of this project. These included the fixed spiral staircase & fire stair, existing main public entrance, existing window openings, existing atrium running GF to SF, limited lift locations, fixed project budget and fixed project timeline.
It’s the first time that Keele has ever had a building that’s not on the Keele University campus, and it’s the first time that there’s a building like this in the town of Newcastle-under-Lyme.
The café will go to an independent provider, to make it more sociable space that the public can come into. Spaces on the other floors are available to the university students and staff to use to study and work.
Members of the public can come in to use the flexible working spaces as well as booking out the rooms for events, workshops outreach activities. Whilst these are usually accommodated for on campus, Keele in Town has made this more accessible by having the facility in the town also.
‘Keele in Town’ marks a significant milestone for Keele University, representing its first off-campus building. The mixed-use facility brings together staff, students, alumni, local businesses, and the wider community to a single melting pot to forge new connections, exchange ideas, eat, work and play.
“We did a lot of stakeholder engagement with different departments from Keele University, and it was our design challenge try to alleviate and solve some of these problems. There were lots of challenges with the nature of the existing building – one of the biggest with the spiral stair – but these really made the design and gave us something to work with. It takes a village to get to this point – to take a building that’s been closed for 10 years, completely change its use and transform it into what it is today.”
Architect
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