facility focus
Wymondham Rugby Club
One of the largest rugby clubs in East Anglia in terms of membeship, Wymondham Rugby Club had some of the worst facilities, until now that is.
THE club was founded in 1972 by some friends who played their first games in borrowed shirts on high school playing fields before acquiring enough ground for a rugby pitch off Tuttles Lane, named The Foster Harrison Memorial Ground. A second pitch on a neighbouring pitch was added shortly after with the addition of the clubhouse in 1982. The club grew to be one of the largest in the
region, with 22 teams and more than 1,200 members, from U6’s to 1st XV. The idea of relocation was first mooted 15 years ago. The club had outgrown the facilities. With just two pitches and four small changing rooms with one shared shower, games and fixtures had to be staggered putting additional pressure on both. Most home youth and many senior games had to be played on pitches rented from the Town Council approximately two miles away. The pitches struggled with overuse and would become waterlogged and unusable in the winter months. Funding was an issue, but the club had the advantage of owning its 10 acre site, which was
in a good developable location. “As time progressed and with the need for
more homes in the Greater Norwich area, the opportunity arose for the club to team up with a local farmer - a member and big supporter of
the club - to submit a development application to include the existing club site, the proposed site and an adjoining site, which was owned by the farmer,” explains Martin Lewis, director at architectural practice Chaplin Farrant, which provided full multidisciplinary design and cost consultancy services for the site’s new community sports facilities. Martin Lewis started coaching with the minis
at the club after his son took up the sport, and was asked to join the development committee to advise and help with the relocation. Chaplin Farrant was subsequently invited to bid for the project on a competitive tender basis. The development application generated the
£4.5m needed for the pitch works and a clubhouse on a new 30 acre site, which was gifted to the club by the Barnard family, hence the name of the new site Barnard Fields.
functional facility “Our challenge was to provide a functional facility for the club that would meet its future
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aspirations; while also providing a corporate and a community facility that would encourage other sports and clubs; a social club as well as a space that could be hired for meetings, corporate events and private functions; all without losing the rugby club’s identity,” says Lewis. The 30 acre site is three times the size of
the club’s former home. It offers a bespoke design two-storey club house providing just under 11,000sq ft of internal accommodation as well as parking for around 400 cars, four full sized (flood lit) rugby pitches together with age specific rugby pitchers ranging from U6 to U13. There are also two artificial cricket pitches and a designated area for archery. The location of the site in a rural area and
on former arable land influenced the design of the clubhouse, which features a mixed palette of materials including traditional brickwork with field flint panels to the ground floor and timber cladding to the first floor. The roof was designed as a flat roof to
Images: Sarah Toon
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