Chingford Audi, Cork Tree Way, London
Client: Group 1 Automotive
Cork Tree Way forms part of Cork Tree Retail Park, a shopping centre beside the A406 North Circular in Chingford. The name is a reminder of the Cork Manufacturing Co. Ltd, whose ‘Langite Works’ occupied the site until 1983. From here, the company’s famous ‘Chingford’ cricket and hockey balls were exported across the world. The company also manufactured engineering gaskets, washers and other products for the electrical, aeronautical and motor industries.
Group 1 Automotive’s proposal was to turn a site containing a single-storey car showroom, remnant parts of the Cork Manufacturing Co. Ltd’s 20th-century industrial units and a modern multi-storey industrial unit, formerly a printworks, into an integrated sales and workshop centre. The structural frame of the printworks has been re-used in the scheme, reclad in more thermally efficient materials. The front half of the building has become a new vehicle showroom and the back half a reconfigured and expanded workshop.
The site partially encompassed the medieval manorial site of Chingford St Paul’s. Although there are now no above-ground remains of this site, the moated site of its successor, Chingford Hall, together with its associated farm, gardens and outbuildings, survived into the 19th century, and the moat itself survived as an earthwork well into the 20th century. It was thought possible that elements of moat might survive.
PCA Heritage worked closely with the client, main contractor (Horizon Construction), Historic England and Pre-Construct Archaeology to develop an archaeological mitigation strategy based upon historic building recording of the Cork Manufacturing Co. Ltd’s buildings, producing an interpretation panel (pictured) for permanent display in the used vehicle display area and an undertake archaeological watching brief of groundworks where they coincided with the moated site. In the event, the watching brief demonstrated that demolition of the Cork Manufacturing Co. Ltd’s factory in the 1980s had removed any remains of Chingford Manor which may once have existed on the site.
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