Rivergreen Development’s latest hospitality venture, the St Mary’s Inn at Stannington, opened its doors to customers in November 2014.

The former Administration Building of St Mary’s Hospital has been transformed into a boutique pub and Bed & Breakfast offering the very best of food and drink, with the majority of ingredients sourced locally and 11 en-suite bedroom suites.

The pub has been hugely popular since opening for business although the conversion of the striking building presented a few challenges as David Kendall explained, “Rivergreen Developments are very long standing clients whom we know very well – we know what they like and how they work, which was actually necessary because I can’t recall another project where we have had such a high level of detailed involvement, or one which we have enjoyed as much!”

“We received Planning Permission for a pub/restaurant five years previously but now the building was required to include en-suite bedrooms as well. We redesigned the proposals to include a new-build extension to the rear which would hold the restaurant and first floor bedrooms built around an external courtyard.”

“In addition, the interior of the building was completely rotten – everything inside had to be new, from the bar fittings to the fireplaces, yet our brief was to produce a sense of warmth and welcome in what was essentially a fairly stark and functional building.”
“Finally, we had a build programme to produce a highly serviced building that included restoration and new-build that only began in January 2014 but needed to be complete so that the pub could open on November 1st the same year, so, yes, more than a few challenges!”

“Knowing how Rivergreen worked and what they wanted, however, made such a difference to this project as we were involved in every detail from the external structure to the internal décor. The Rivergreen brief was to ‘keep it simple but do it well’ on every aspect. So while externally the Inn retains the original colourful red brick and contrasting window mouldings, internally the colour palette has been kept fairly simple with the exception of one wall which I felt needed some vibrancy and so I spent a couple of weekends stencilling and printing on it – Rivergreen fortunately warmed to the design!”

Not content with David’s contribution, JDDK Director Ian Clarke added his own personal skills of calligraphy to the project by hand painting the names of each bedroom on the wall outside each room so that the pub became a true JDDK team effort.