Eagle eared customers may have noticed hammering, drilling and other construction noises on online meetings and calls with us recently. We’re currently 3 months into a 2-year project refreshing PatronBase UK & Ireland’s home in Bradford.

The phase we’re currently completing sees Partnerships Director Emma move into a new office, replacing an underutilised internal meeting room. This room was a particularly tricky space to refurbish – although it retained period features, they’d been significantly damaged when the room was split in the mid 20th century. We chose to make sensitive changes such as replacing later woodwork with features more consistent with Victorian counterparts but concealing rather than removing features such as the damaged plaster cornices, so that they can be restored in the future.

Emma’s office move frees up other space to improve and expand our customer meeting and training facilities and will give space to better display demo hardware and software for organisations wanting to visit us and see how PatronBase works with cutting edge POS, kiosk, and tablet hardware. Work on these spaces will be taking place later this year, alongside a gentler refresh of development and support labs, and admin workspaces. Where possible, we’re improving our energy efficiency as we go, such as by replacing existing lighting with LED.

The final phase, planned for next year, will see us make some major changes to our event and training space (the Turing Suite) on the top floor. With space for up to 20 delegates classroom-style, or 35 delegates theatre-style, this space gives us the flexibility to run larger training sessions, small conferences and meet-ups and other events. Although much of our training is on site, many customers are feeling the pinch of tighter budgets, so having the flexibility to deliver training or host events “at our place” will allow us to offer broader “public” sessions that organisations can send one or two delegates to, at lower cost than us coming to them, and with the added benefit of learning and sharing from peers. This is in addition to our onsite and online training, which will continue to be a key part of our offer.

We’re excited to see this project develop and look forward to you seeing the benefits over the coming weeks and months.

The History

Parkinson’s Buildings, our base, is a purpose-built commercial building in Bradford city centre dating from 1877. As centre of the global wool trade, Victorian Bradford grew up around our near neighbour the Grade 1 Listed Wool Exchange, with buildings such as ours providing space for merchants and other professionals supporting the industry.

Our own building isn’t listed – although it has an impressive stonework exterior, it’s been heavily modified on the ground floor, and Bradford suffers an embarrassment of riches in late Victorian architecture meaning our own 4 upper floors aren’t considered important enough to merit listing. However, I’m a firm believer in the value of the heritage of the “unsung hero” – those underappreciated buildings which nonetheless add to the historic character of our towns and cities.

History of the building is limited. It was designed by local architects George Knowles and William Wilcox. From what we can find in sources such as the London Gazette, the building has always played host to professional services – lawyers, bankers, agents, accountants – throughout the 19th and 20th century, which we bring up to date in 21st with software and services.

However the building does give quirky insight into how commercial fashions have changed – Victorian original elements, my own Art Deco style office inspired by a later fireplace, through wartime austerity, the 70s wood panelled office and modern open plan. When we commission work on the building we try to do so sensitively, balancing the desire to preserve what period features remain with the need to make the most of the space.