Access Audit - Harvington Hall

• Posted by Ian Eggleton on 26th Apr ’10 at 15:19 UTC
• 0 comments

Access Audit Case Study of Grade I Listed Harvington Hall

As part of a project working with the Visit Heart of England tourist Board Evans Jones completed an Access Audit of Harvington Hall near Kidderminster. The Hall comprises a 16th Century Grade I Listed Manor House surrounded by a moat.

The challenge for us was how to make all parts of the Hall accessible to disabled visitors whilst balancing this against the requirement to preserve a very important Grade I listed building.

As the Hall is laid out over a number of floors with steep, narrow and winding staircases much of the upper floor areas will prove inaccessible to elderly and mobility impaired users aswell as wheelchair users. The practicalities and costs of providing any form of lift access to these upper floors was such that this option was quickly dismissed.

In fact given the Grade I listed status of the property even minor changes to handrails and steps were problematic.

Thus we had to adopt a far more flexible approach by delivering the service by an alternative means which in this case involved a video tour which visitors could view at an accessible level thus taking the experience to the visitor rather than the visitor to the experience. This allowed the guides to re-create the guided tours which are such an integral part of the experience (including a demonstration of the numerous priest holes hidden around the building which is not to be missed).

This was aided by the every knowledgeable guides who were already doing their best to make the full service as accessible as possible to all visitors.

This demonstrates the flexible approach that can be adopted when considering the requirements of the DDA which simply requires service providers to make reasonable adjustments.

The technological approach adopted, along with the great customer service offered by the staff does, we feel, mean that the Hall is meeting its obligations under the DDA.

Evans Jones have completed DDA Audits of a number of historic building such as; Ragley Hall, Warwickshire; Pittville Pump Rooms, Cheltenham and Usk Castle. .

Click on the link to read more about Access Audits or contact me by email or phone on 01242 531413.