Winslade Park – The Forge

Set adjacent to Winslade Manor within Winslade House is a contemporary café, deli bar and event space, set to host conferencing, weddings, private dining and concerts for up to 400 people.

The sheer size of the project and the number of labourers, contractors and designers involved made for a very demanding design and build. With a window of just 3 weeks for a completely new ventilation system, state-of-the-art all-electric kitchen, servery, shop-fit enclosure and bespoke bar build, 15-hour days were standard practice for our project manager on site.

One of the key design points was “to be the grandest and most modern-chic event space in the South-west” and the kitchen needed to “facilitate the needs of up to 8 kitchen staff to serve up to 400 guests for events along with 1500 deli-style meals per day during the working week”. All of the big toys and weapons within Aspen’s arsenal were deployed to deliver this one which resulted in a snag-free kitchen handover 2 days ahead of schedule.

We used some very intricate fabrication designs to modernise the industrial metalwork theme with the addition of strategically placed, touch-pad-controlled LED lighting which compliments the class echoed throughout the event space.

Kitchen equipment selection was fairly straightforward, with brands of choice being Moretti-Forni, Foster and Rational.