The Axe & Compasses

The Axe & Compasses

Hospitality — A Tone Commission

A village pub that earns three trading regimes

A Hertfordshire gastropub-with-rooms in Braughing, treated as one Commission across bar, dining, and accommodation. The Discovery hour covered the trading regime in detail: weekend visitors who drive an hour for the pub's reputation, weekday locals who depend on the bar still feeling local, residential guests who pay a premium for the rooms above. The interior had to read as the same building to all three.

The Commission held the building's character — beams, brick, the structural truth of the inn — while specifying everything around it for hospitality-tier trading. The result is a venue the rooms guides reference and the village still calls "the Axe".

Braughing, Hertfordshire  ·  Hospitality  ·  76 photographs
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The Discovery is the first stage of every Tone Commission: a structured meeting at YOUR property or at the studio, where Manong walks YOUR brief with you and tells you plainly what she would do with the space. She is the designer on every Commission she takes, and the work is never handed to a junior. The Discovery is a paid stage, credited in full against the design fee if you both decide to go on, so YOU find out what YOU are dealing with either way.

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