Finding new purpose

The re-use of architectural materials and elements has a long and surprising history that’s all too easy to overlook, as John Goodall explains

- John Goodall

On his arrival at St Albans in 1077, the first Norman abbot of the great monastery there found that one of his predecessors had amassed a great stockpile of building materials stripped from the nearby ruins of the Roman town of Verulamium. Accordingly, he used Roman bricks throughout the construction of the monumental church that still dominates the town. The building to the right, William Whitfield’s Chapter House, which opened in 1982, uses modern bricks of Roman proportion

When Elizabeth I visited her favourite Robert Dudley at Kenilworth Castle, Warwickshire, in the 1570s, she attended divine service in the parish church. To dignify the building, this magnificent 12th-century doorway—which probably came from the ruins of Kenilworth Priory—was salvaged and inserted into the church tower, reconfigured and elaborated in the process. It’s an unexpected work of Elizabethan architecture

Herstmonceux Castle, East Sussex, was written off as too costly to repair in the 1770s. From 1913, its ruins were restored by two successive owners using furnishings taken from other houses. The stair here reputedly comes from Theobalds, which was built by William Cecil, and resembles the stair of another important Cecil house at Hatfield, Hertfordshire

The 16th-century Feeringbury Barn, Essex, was restored by owners Ben Coode-Adams and Freddie Robins with Hudson Architects from 2009. Their work makes extensive use of recycled material: the concrete grain silos were re-used as bathrooms and a staircase