Welbeck Estate site launched

We're pleased to launch our latest major website, for the Welbeck Estate.

Welbeck is a 15,000 acre country estate between Sheffield and Nottingham, which over the years has been home to everything from an Abbey to a Military College. It is a place of contrasts and unexpected delights - from classical gothic architecture to contemporary offices, and natural crags to a labyrinth of man-made underground tunnels.

Following this tradition of radical change without losing the spirit of the past, the Welbeck company are on a mission to establish Welbeck as a unique community where people live, work and visit. Millions have been invested in infrastructure and converting and renovating dozens of buildings in order to attract people to share this vision. In fact it is already home to an array of artisan food producers, craftspeople and high tech companies, including a farm shop, brewery and cafe. A major emphasis of the project is on community and sustainability.

Rckt were approached to design a website that conveyed the many facets of the projects. Following a competitive pitch process, we spent time working with the client to map out the site's audience, goals and structure. It took several iterations to come up with an architecture which made it clear what Welbeck was offering, made it easy to quickly find information, and be future proof as the estate expands its offering in the future. Based on Welbeck's existing branding, Rckt designed the site from scratch.

The Welbeck company were keen to include social media in the site, including not only their own activity on Twitter, Flickr and Facebook, but also that of their tenants and visitors. A social media footer at the bottom of every page helps bring it to life.

To show off the stunning scenery of the estate, and the amazing architectural design both old and new, photography was commissioned and featured heavily on the site.

Technically, the site is right up to date, using the latest HTML5 for better performance in modern web browsers, and responsive design so it looks great on tablet and smartphones, as well as on your desktop computer.

And of course, no site which features gourmet food producers would be complete without the Rckt taste test of farm shop produce, which I'm pleased to report it passed with flying colours!

Take a look at the site - www.welbeck.co.uk