Paul Heighway, Local Architect
Paul Heighway, Local Architect
In his garden in Dittisham, Paul Heighway keeps one of his four great loves, something many men would covet – his shed.
With its incredible view of the widest sweep of the Dart, this is not a shed as most would describe it. This is more a studio and workshop, and from within wonders are created.
Paul is a busy man. One of nature’s workers for whom relaxation means making something. He has created a fleet of beautifully crafted wooden trucks for his children and grandchildren, he restores and maintains boats including another love of his life, Muriel, a 105-year-old gentleman’s racing yacht, he makes props and scenery for Dittisham’s hugely popular plays and pantos, and he is the mastermind behind the interesting door closer in the Ferry Boat Inn. If you’ve been there, you’ll know what I mean!
But more seriously, Paul is the architect behind a number of incredibly significant projects that have brought big changes to life on the Dart – not least the Flavel, Dartmouth’s vibrant arts and community hub.
He was also the mastermind behind the refurbishment of St Clement’s, St Petrox and the Flavel Churches, and the transformation of St Barnabas Church into one of the most popular and breathtaking restaurants in the region.
Paul was a partner, now a consultant, with Heighway Field Associates, based in Exeter. His work has been described as inspirational. It is another of his loves, and passion for the art of building design is ever present in his conversation.
“I am very proud of the work we have done. The Flavel was a tremendous project and I would love to do more there. My vision is to extend it onto the police station site with a first floor arch linking the two sections – it would be brilliant! It would enhance what is already a fantastic facility for Dartmouth – we could have more meeting rooms and make it available to even more people. Dartmouth could do with a new police station anyway!”
Not afraid of expressing his opinions and getting involved, Paul is a former chairman of Dartmouth Round Table, former vice chairman of governors at Dartmouth Community College, and was a parish councillor for 18 years.
He has a reputation for speaking his mind and getting things done, and he helped realise the ambition to build the outdoor swimming pool, finally constructed as a self build project by local trainees, meeting former school pupils who had been collecting pennies in jam jars to build a swimming pool 50 years before.
His ambitious parking plans for Coronation Park were rejected, but he is adamant they would still work and that they will have their day: “My scheme was to raise the ground level, complete with grass, thereby preserving the view, and put the parking underneath. National Car Parks turned it down 15 years ago but it would still work and boy, does Dartmouth need to solve its parking problems.
“I’ve also worked on plans for a water and sports centre for Coronation Park. It hasn’t happened yet, but the drawings are there.”
Historic buildings are Paul’s real passion. This is obvious to anyone setting foot inside St Clement’s Church or the Dartmouth Apprentice restaurant that now inhabits St Barnabas Church. His work has won a number of conservation awards.
Paul looks after 40 churches all over Devon as an inspecting architect. He worked closely with the Rev Simon Wright and the building committee for five years. Their plans to remove pews and re-order St Clement’s Church in Dartmouth were initially met with dismay by some, but the result is delightful, and as Paul explained, it’s returned the church to its original layout.
“Unfortunately the Victorians were vandals when it came to restoration of medieval buildings – great engineers but they had little regard for historic buildings.
“They took a medieval church, lowered its floor so they could have their seven steps, representing the days of creation, put in pews so everyone would have to sit in stiff backed rows, and took away all the medieval characteristics.
“Churches from the era when St Clement’s was built were meeting places – community halls with many uses where mass would be preached constantly and the people would come and go. The only ones who sat would do so around the edge and only if they were very infirm or unwell – hence the expression ‘having their backs against the wall.’
“What we tried to do was put the church back to how it used to be – chairs instead of pews that can be moved around, raising the floor to its original level (which had the advantage of allowing us to put in underfloor heating and improve disabled access) and reinstating the original main entrance.”
Traditional methods and materials were used, and modern touches sensitively installed. Paul said: “With its kitchen, vestry and toilets the church can now go back to being a meeting place throughout the week. These beautiful old buildings should be used, and should be at the heart of their community every day, not just on Sunday mornings.”
With an eye on the past, though, Paul has kept detailed drawn records of the now-removed Victorian changes, and the pattern of the floor remains a deliberate memory of the Victorians’ alterations.
It was Paul’s father who first gave his son a love of creativity. Born in Wolverhampton and brought up in London, Paul was an only child and his father, commercial artist and draughtsman Arthur Heighway, spent hours teaching his young son how to draw and make models.
Paul said: “Despite that, I wanted to be a David Bellamy character and went to university to study science, but my maths wasn’t up to it.
“I then spotted an ad in the Architects’ Journal for a position in an office working on laboratory and hospital design. With my Dad’s instruction, my studying of sciences and my understanding of the doctors’ technical language and requirements, it was the ideal job for me.”
Paul kept up his studies alongside his work. Training for architecture takes many years and he qualified at the Northern Polytechnic in London when he was 30. In those days practices recruited their staff during the regular Wednesday cricket matches in Regent’s Park.
It was Christmas when Paul discovered the fourth love of his life, posting her Christmas cards in Ruislip. Now an experienced teacher, Pat has been married to Paul for 41 years and he is devoted to her. Their children are Jonathan, an architect, and Penny, a lawyer, and they have eight grandchildren.
The desire for a better life for their children brought Paul and Pat to Dittisham 32 years ago. The couple have thrown themselves into local life ever since and both are passionate about keeping the village a living community.
“Ditsum is a magical place,” said Paul. “The setting is amazing anyway – but there are so many interesting people here and it is a village with a heart that still has two pubs, a church, a café, a village hall with all its clubs and societies, the life on the river, and it is still a community.
“Drawing work is so precise, and here I have all the things I need so that when I come away from my drawing board I can let my brain go – the models, the trucks, the toys, and the company of friends in the pubs and the café in this wonderful place.”
First Published February 2010 By The Dart