Climate Change Adaptation Case Study: Chippenham Hall
This case study shows how owners of a stately home gained consent for installing solar panels in the registered landscape adjacent to the listed building.
About the property:
The property is a stately home and landscaped park located in Chippenham, a village located in east Cambridgeshire.
The estate landscape is a Grade II registered park and garden.
The Hall, dovecote, lodges and the entry gate to the North West are also Grade II listed. The stables, lodges, gateway, and railings to the south of the park are Grade II* listed.
The project focused on changes to the registered park and garden. The park dates from 1702 and has undergone several changes throughout the centuries. The gardens and pleasure grounds cover six hectares of the grounds, enclosed by a ha-ha.
About the adaptation
The Hall owners wanted to reduce electricity bills and use solar panels to generate energy for the hall through the installation of a new ground-mounted solar array covering approximately 0.025 hectares, consisting of 32 ground-mounted solar panels. The solar panels were connected to the Hall by underground cabling, and a new length of 1.5 metre high yew hedging was also requested in the planning permission.
What happened during the planning process
Historic England was consulted due to the listed status of the building.
The installation process
The solar array has been inserted into the pleasure grounds approximately 25 metres west of the Hall, set within a hedged enclosure formed by a new length of yew hedging and an existing mature 2.2 metre high hornbeam hedge on the western edge of a gravel parking area. The enclosure is in keeping with the scale and character of other features within pleasure grounds, and the hedging effectively screens the solar array in views from other parts of the site.
Impact and lessons learned
- The physical and visual impact of the solar panels is minimal. This is due to the sensitive planting of hedgerows around the solar arrays to screen them from view.
- The carbon benefits are not yet known as the project is only recently completed.
