Community Repair Gallery

The Royal Hotel was a pub in the town of Usk, Monmouthshire. Usk is a small rural town (population ~3,000) with a seasonal economy. Known as the ‘Town of Flowers’ its annual ‘Usk in Bloom’ event draws in many visitors. The Royal Hotel is a grade II listed building dating back to 1839. It originally served as a house and was later repurposed as a hotel and pub before shutting in 2009. The extensions at the back have been used as both a cartwright’s and an undertaker’s.

The project proposes a repurposing - transforming the hotel into a series of studio spaces and café and the old cartwright’s into a gallery, with four more flexible studio spaces above it and three large workshop spaces all enclosed within a new timber structure – sides clad in metal reused from the sheds that previously occupied the site. The courtyard created by this structure can then play host to communal making events or other attractions.