Warneford Park: Mental Health and Medical Research Campus, Oxford, UK
Eric Parry Architects’ design for a new Mental Health and Medical Research Campus at Warneford Park in Oxford was awarded a resolution to grant planning consent on 21 April 2026.
The £750 million project, delivered in partnership with the University of Oxford and a benefactor will create a nationally-significant, 950,000 sq ft mental health and research-powered medical science campus that will provide outstanding new mental healthcare facilities for Oxfordshire.
The design will integrate the existing 200-year-old, Grade II listed hospital buildings to provide accommodation for a new University of Oxford college at the heart of the hospital and medical science ecosystem in Headington.
A new research centre for the University of Oxford, will bring together clinical care, multi-disciplinary science and education, including housing the Department of Psychiatry, and related commercial medical research facilities.
Bringing together science and clinical care on one site will result in the benefits from mental health research being translated directly into clinical practice. Warneford Park’s state-of-the-art facilities will attract top-class specialists, graduate students and post-doctoral researchers, all of whom will enrich research and innovation. Together they will focus on early prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of mental illness.
Eric Parry Architects’ design for the development sensitively repurposes the existing grade II-listed hospital buildings on the site. The new graduate college of the University of Oxford will feature facilities including en-suite rooms for 250 students, academic offices, meeting rooms and teaching spaces, a performance and rehearsal space, a dining hall, informal study spaces and a library.
To the east of the site, the first phase of the project will see the creation of new buildings totalling 685,000 sq ft across a purpose-built mental health hospital and medical research centre. The operations of Warneford Hospital will continue uninterrupted while construction is carried out. Patients and staff will transfer from the older listed buildings when the work is complete. The listed buildings will then be converted to the new graduate college.
Sustainability is a key consideration of the plans: from the re-use of historic buildings, to the application of the Passivhaus principles and NHS Net Zero Carbon Standard, and the revitalisation of the historic landscape. Eric Parry Architects has worked with the renowned landscape architect Todd Longstaffe-Gowan to create grounds that incorporate a variety of settings and activity, including ornamental gardens, rain gardens, and productive spaces for patients. The biodiversity of the site will be boosted by the creation of new habitat that complements the neighbouring Warneford Meadow, a designated Town Green.
The scheme includes:
- a new hospital focusing on providing modern inpatient facilities, with an emphasis on patient wellness and therapeutic spaces that connect with nature.
- a world-class research facility that will aim to tackle some of the most important issues in brain and mental health by discovering new forms of treatment and therapies.
- postgraduate college accommodation and restoration of the historic hospital buildings to give them a new lease of life as college facilities.
- a revitalised landscape that will create an exceptional environment for healthcare, medical research and education.
Eric Parry, Founder at Eric Parry Architects said:
“Warneford Park presents a unique opportunity to realise the full benefits of research collaboration through the long-term partnership between the Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Oxford. By providing shared facilities for the significant concentration of expertise located here in Oxford, Warneford Park will create an outstanding environment for healthcare, innovation and education, supporting the UK’s internationally-significant contribution to the field of medical research.”
Robert Dawson, Director at Eric Parry Architects said:
“The existing Warneford Hospital buildings are thought to be the oldest in-patient buildings in continuous use within the NHS Estate. Our landscape-led approach to the proposals will create new patient accommodation in buildings designed to support contemporary clinical care and wellbeing. Collocated with multi discipline research space, housing the University of Oxford Psychiatry Department, with other academic disciplines and commercial start-ups and pharma companies, we will also safeguard the future of the grade II listed buildings by converting them for use as a new University of Oxford graduate college. These individual elements will transform the site to a campus of clinicians, researchers, and academic students translating life science discoveries into new treatments.”
