H G Matthews

The Nursery at Bellingdon was the brainchild of Jim Matthews and influential German architect Gernot Minke. Comprising of a 5m high dome, exterior walls of Strocks, hemp-lime insulationand woodfired brick facing. The whole structure was built on compacted flint foundations and topped with a green roof. Blocks were specially shaped in three sizes to accommodate the change in angle of the dome, one of the qualities of the clay straw mix is its ability to take up most shapes. The dome itself is a big piece of thermal mass as well as part of the load bearing structure of the roof. The outer walls have Strocks to hold the remaining weight of roof which are in turn insulated with hemp-lime blocks with a brick rain screen of the factories wood fired bricks. The whole structure has beautiful clay plaster finishes internally, fair-faced blockwork on the interior of the dome and many factory made ceramic detailed panels. It’s a little gem of a showcase of all that HG Matthews can produce. In addition with a lot of little people running around inside it each day very little is needed to heat the structure which neither overheats or gets cold, storing the heat of the nursery by day and releasing it at night.

The Serge Hill Project for Gardening, Creativity and Health was granted planning permission in January 2020. The aim is to develop a community garden on a one-acre site known as The Orchard, at Serge Hill in Hertfordshire. The proposed building at the heart of the Orchard has been designed by architect Ben Stuart-Smith, as part of architecture and design collective Okra https://okrastudio.com/, and will function as an education and resource centre. It is constructed with radically low embodied carbon from cross-laminated timber infilled with hempcrete internally and vertical cleft oak pales on the outside. The foundations were laid in May 2021, and it opened in Spring 2024. Strocks were used for the floor of the Orchard Building and finished with a coloured linseed oil paint to surprisingly good effect. The floor was subjected to testing including with red wine and found to be quite robust enough for public events. For more on Strocks as a flooring material please do get in touch.

Kings Cross has been under development for more than a decade with commercial and residential structures dominating. Now there are new life science labs being built by developers Ardmore. Their architects Bennetts Associates took inspiration from The Arbour at Walthamstow and pushed to use Site Strocks using the abundant London clay being extracted for the piling and deep basement on site. HG Matthews took the clay and using the new tooling invested for the Site Strock project to process it to the desired mix. This was the first project to properly test off-site material for compression and flexural strength, compression and flexural strength of the clay mortar and fire testing. Passing each hurdle then led to 6m high non-loadbearing walls in the basement to line the building rather than more concrete blocks. Clay blocks mean a better air quality, better humidity performance with good thermal mass. The use of Site Strocks at this scale and by such big developers and contractors really showcases the issues faced by these materials and the solutions found in using them, some provided by HG Matthews, others found through discussion with the contractor. For instance the blockwork sub-contractor was unsure about how to build with clay block and clay mortar so we invited them to the factory for a demo build along with architect and contractor representatives. It soon emerged that this was an easy and non-controversial process and the work commenced. Later bike racks were installed using the standard fixings, short screws intended for use with concrete. After initial problems the contractor found longer fixings with some help from us and the bike racks were fixed. Building on this scale with site material in central London is ground breaking in more ways than one, it starts to open the door for lower emission, circular economy materials to be used anywhere and everywhere.

Material Cultures architect group have a long association with HG Matthews and have used Strocks at The Design Museum and numerous other sites. The project is revitalising the Wolves Lane Centre in Wood Green – a former council-run plant nursery and garden centre taken on in 2017 by a consortium of community organisations and volunteers. The team have added four low-carbon buildings to the site, constructed from bio-based materials including clay, straw and locally sourced timber. The scheme focuses on growing and distributing ‘wholesome food’ and engaging local communities in education, enterprise and events.The project is billed as a ‘replicable model for community-led market gardens’ and is backed by the Mayor of London’s Good Growth-funded Market Garden City programme. This aims to develop plots for local food production, distribution and kitchens which also offer access to green space, training, volunteering and employment. Strocks and clay mortar were used in two of the buildings which compliment the earth plasters perfectly as well as the other structural elements of straw and timber.