Our new studio
13 May 2022 by Simon Drayson
It is wonderful to finally have some professional photos of our new design studio to share, we moved in about 6 months ago but it has taken a little time to settle into the space and be photo ready!
We are so lucky to have found this old refurbished pump room to work from, it is a wonderfully warm and inspiring place set within the South Downs National Park, not far from Midhurst. The pump room is part of a larger redevelopment of a series of old agricultural barns, adjacent to current agricultural buildings, so we get a wonderful mixture of businesses and cows as our neighbours. It is really nice to be working within such a beautiful, rural location whilst being surrounded by other creative industries, such as Fisher & Morrison, the bespoke furniture & joinery company (who we are currently collaborating with on The Farmhouse project.)
Originally when we set up the George & James studio we were located in London, to start with our office was our spare room but quickly we moved to a studio in the heart of Bermondsey. This location suited us at the time, both personally and also worked well for the projects we were focused on, mainly smaller scale domestic schemes.
As our business has expanded our needs have also changed, our projects have grown in scale and we are now working on schemes across the country, which had meant being located in the heart of London was no longer appropriate for George & James. The last few years have been a bit of a whirlwind to find the right place to move to, to get settled in all still while running the business. Finding the pump room seemed to be the easy bit of our journey, we then sold our flat (during lockdown), brought our new home (after many ups and downs of buying a UK property) and finally moved (during the fuel crisis.) It has been an eventful journey to get us to our new home in Midhurst, but now we are located in such a delightful spot (we have even written a bit about it here) and has had such a positive impact on our work, all of which have made the upheaval worthwhile.
For us personally the move was to give us a much needed change in lifestyle; living out of London has given us space to breathe, with the ability to reconnect with nature on a daily basis. For the business it has offered us the studio space to enlarge the George & James team with the capacity for us all together and sharing ideas, geographically we are better able to service our clients in and out of London. Additionally, we now have been able to finally get Archi, the much loved studio dog.
If you are ever passing do drop in to say hi, we have a great coffee machine and always happy to stop for a quick chat.