Little Princess Trust - RRA Architects

RRA was approached by local charity The Little Princess Trust in 2019 to look at converting a disused building into a state-of-the-art Centre of Excellence to house the charity headquarters including offices, a wig fitting salon, a wig making workshop and conference suite.
Status: Completed August 2021
Location: Hereford
Structural Engineer: Hydrock
Contractor: CJ Bayliss
Categories: Commercial, Leisure / Retail
Tags: Architects, Architecture, Bespoke Stairs, Building Design, Centre of Excellence, Charity, Commercial, Commercial Offices, Conference Facility, Contemporary, Exhibition space, Fit Out, Further Education, Hannah Tarplee Building, Head Quarters, Headquarters, Hereford, Hereford Architects, Herefordshire Architects, Interior Design, Little Princess Trust, Office, Office Design, Offices, Princess, Public, Public Services, Retail, Sallys Salon, Salon, Shop, West Midlands, West Midlands Architects, Wig, Wig Fitting, Wig Making

Headquarters of the children's charity the Little Princess Trust in Hereford, The Hannah Tarplee Building.

Sally's Salon at the headquarters of the children's charity the Little Princess Trust in Hereford, The Hannah Tarplee Building.

The wig fitting area at Sally's Salon at the headquarters of the children's charity the Little Princess Trust in Hereford, The Hannah Tarplee Building.

The wig making area at the headquarters of the children's charity the Little Princess Trust in Hereford, The Hannah Tarplee Building.

The wig storage area at the headquarters of the children's charity the Little Princess Trust in Hereford, The Hannah Tarplee Building.

The conference facility at the headquarters of the children's charity the Little Princess Trust in Hereford, The Hannah Tarplee Building.

Sign reading "RRA Architects kindly supported the cost of our amazing purpose made stairwell."

The stairwell at the headquarters of the children's charity the Little Princess Trust in Hereford, The Hannah Tarplee Building.

Established in Hereford in 2006, The Little Princess Trust provides free real hair wigs to children and young people, up to 24 years, who have lost their own hair through cancer treatment or other conditions, as well as funding vital research to find better treatments for childhood cancers.

Read more about the Little Princess Trust here.

The brief was to maximise the potential of the existing site in a cost effective way, but also to incorporate several different spaces so that all the Trusts administrative and operational activities could be under one roof. This would include:

Office space for the administration work.
Salon for fitting the bespoke wigs to the children and young people.
Conference and training suite to host ground-breaking paediatric cancer treatment and research conferences with international experts, funding bodies and laboratories.

Following a successful feasibility study, a number of concept designs were developed for the Trust before they selected their preferred scheme to be developed and submitted for planning approval.

Construction started with ground works at the end of 2020 and the steel frame was in position with the roof being fitted by April 2021. Once the the exterior of the building had been clad and the windows installed, the scaffolding could be removed and in June 2021 the focus moved to the finer details of fitting out interior of the building.

Progress continued at a good rate and in August 2021 the project was complete and ready for the topping out ceremony. A cherry picker was on hand for Hannah’s Mum, Wendy Tarplee-Morris, to attach the butterfly to the top of the building as a symbol of Hannah watching over the building.

The Little Princess Trust has named the centre the Hannah Tarplee Building, after Hannah Tarplee who at just five-years-old was diagnosed with a Wilms Tumour and her parents struggled to find a wig suitable for her during treatment. Hannah’s parents founded the charity in Hannah’s memory.

RRA is extremely proud to be part of this amazing project which will benefit all the many thousands of people who are involved with the charity and will also put Herefordshire on the map as a very significant player in the field of paediatric cancer research.

It was a privilege to be involved and we are very proud of RRA Associate, Tom Froggatt, who designed the scheme and managed the build.
Our thanks go to the whole team who worked so well together to make the idea a reality, with special thanks to the contractor CJ Bayliss and Little Princess Trust Chief Executive, Phil Brace, for being a driving force and a superb client.