Partnerships with Portsmouth University

Wymering Manor Trust has enjoyed a close relationship with the University of Portsmouth since the idea to form a preservation trust came about in 2012. Andy Mason (former chair of trustees) had carried out research at the manor as part of his MSc in Historic Building Conservation at Portsmouth, and approached the University to explore potential student projects and opportunities for collaboration. 

From that point forward, students and staff across many courses and disciplines have engaged with diverse projects and studies at the manor. Belinda Mitchell has now joined our Board of trustees.

Download the full activity report here. Initiatives have included:

Student learning

• MSc Historic Building Conservation – learning about the process of acquisition and engaging with specialist surveys and investigations.
• Developing student projects and research activities, particularly within the School of Architecture and the wider Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries
• The manor is one of a number of optional sites for the Year 3 Major Design Project for BA Interior Architecture and Design, typically involving developing schemes for the reuse of the Manor
• Interdisciplinary Projects with Creative Technology Students (including Digital Media, Marketing, Music and Sound Technology, Entertainment Technology)
• BA(Hons) Photography – atmospheric and inspiring site for students to develop their craft.
• BA(Hons) History a student worked at Wymering to develop content for a revised booklet about the Manor.
• MA Interior Architecture and Design (MAID) The Manor has been used as a site for explorations of interior design theory and practice by MA Interior Architecture and Design students since 2013. Past projects have included student proposals that examine health care, bed and breakfast, community / workspaces and a hotel. MA IAD are currently working with the volunteers at the Manor to develop community engagement through participatory workshops.  
• Historic Building Conservation (MSc HBC) – site visits to learn about research, site analysis, condition reporting and materials. In 2015 students prepared heritage statements for the manor to assess the impact on significance of certain proposals for alterations. Other projects included investigation of the render and paint layers on the external chimney stack using a scanning electron microscope and survey of the chimney stacks using an endoscopic camera searching for evidence of priest holes.
• HBC postgraduate students collaborated with MA IAD students to research and document historic doors at Wymering.

School of Architecture Project Office

• In 2014, as part of the Project Office a group of 60 architecture and interior design students from the School participated in a week-long intensive design ‘charrette’ with the Trust to help create inspiring, creative and beautiful design ideas to revitalise and reinvigorate the Manor.

Events

• Elizabethan Noyses at Wymering Manor celebrated Wymering as a rare survival of a timber-framed manor house from the time of Shakespeare. Students from Creative Writing, Photography and Interior Design introduced creative installations inviting imaginative engagement with the Manor’s Elizabethan past.
• Student and staff work has been exhibited at the Manor on a number of occasions, including for Open Days, including models, photographs, drawings, sketch books, artefacts and design proposals.
• Volunteering MSc Historic Building Conservation students have volunteered at the Manor to offer services including specialist plastering expertise.

Staff projects

• Belinda Mitchell – More or Less Than Conversation, Winchester School of Art. Belinda worked with The Phenomenology and Imagination Research Group (PIRG) at Winchester School of Art using Wymering as a site for investigating material conversations, and a timber floor joist from the Manor was used as a focus for her creative practice. Her work has been exhibited at WSA. 
• Belinda Mitchell and Dr Karen Fielder – Matter of the Manor is a practice research project that examines alternative modes of architectural space-making in order to develop a language with which to represent the emotional and sensory experience of space.

Publications from this project include: 

• Fielder, K. & Mitchell, B (2019) Interior Futures, Thresholds of the Future, Crucible USA. An article that uses the doors and the thresholds of the Manor to discuss its past, present and future life. 
• Fielder, K. & Mitchell, B. (April 2018) Matter of a Manor: mattering, Journal of Interior Design, Wiley. An article that creatively engages with the historic building.
• Mitchell, B, (2018) Lines between: emotion and affect in architectural space, Turn the Page Collected Essays 2018. A project that explores the relationship between language and image through the form of the artists’ book.

Exhibitions include:

• Mitchell, B, (2022) online group exhibition, Ecologies of Drawing: In Situ, exhibition, Tracey, Loughborough.
• Mitchell, B (2021) group exhibition, Osmosis, espacio Gallery, London
• Mitchell, B (2018) group exhibition, Friends of Interpretable Spaces, Hackney, London.  
• Belinda Mitchell and Dr Karen Fielder, Thresholds of the Future A project using the doors and the thresholds of the Manor to discuss its past, present and future life. 

Find out more about these projects in the 2017 Activity Report.

Public talks include:

• 2023 – Patience in Placemaking, as part of Loughborough University Drawing Research Network. This project explores the use of LiDAR drawings in historic sites.
• 2022 – Material Matters: Drawing Interiors, public talk, online talk at the Drawing Room, London. A talk that explored the entanglement of the house through its volunteers. It explored the relationship between drawing and cleaning.

Supernatural Cities

Supernatural Cities Research Group has supported the funding of a LiDAR scan of the Manor. Clifford Phillips in CCiXR, the virtual reality lab at the Univeristy of Porstmouth, has produced a 3D model of the Manor. This work has resulted in the presentation of a conference paper, Matter of the Manor: Found Magic, with Maggie Bowers, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at UoP, at the recent Architecture, Media, Politics, Society Conference, (In)tangible Heritage(s) (2022) and to presentations at the Magical Realism Symposiums held at UoP (2021) (2022).  This project has also facilitated a creative writing workshop at Wymering Manor with Matt Wingett (2022).

Looking ahead

We’re delighted to be working so closely with the University, and look forward to future collaborations.