St Mary Stoke Newington was designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott and completed in 1856. The spire and a further (new) vestry were added by his son John Oldrid Scott in 1890. The church is Grade II* listed, the adjacent rectory, which bounds the landscape south, is Grade II listed. In 1996 the new vestry was partially enveloped by Church Rooms. The brief for the new community centre was to transform and extend the existing church rooms, built as a 1996 cloister extension to the Grade II* listed church. The new building infills the courtyard area of the 1996 extension. The key conceptual approach considered the new building as an extension of the existing narrative of the ‘collection of buildings’– connected by a circumferential route, which historically existed. The new core is inserted to define a cloister route along the fabric of the historic buildings, where it forms natural conversation niches between its large stone buttresses. Strategic openings illuminate these cloister spaces with intimate natural lighting and draw views up onto church elevation.