Parham House & Gardens

After almost 2 years without visitors, the team at Parham House, a popular Elizabethan attraction in West Sussex, readies themselves to open to the public. Lady Emma and Mr Barnard, together with the Parham House and garden team, engaged Speccy to realise the website designs crafted by the talented Sam Freeman of Penta Studio.

The goal of the project was to pay homage to centuries of history with a website that was every bit as beautiful and inspiring as the house and gardens themselves. Dan and Sam met with the family to discuss how that website might look, how that heritage might be reflected, and how we could cater for a vast range of audiences, from young families to retirees.

Bringing history to life through the art of subtle web animation

With such beautiful web designs enriching the history of the house and days gone by, we built the website inside of WordPress – a platform that the Parham House & Gardens team knew well and were keen to stay with. We used Greensock, a Javascript web animation library to introduce subtle parallax and movement animations throughout the site that really bring the imagery and historic scans and drawings to life.

As you scroll through the page, new sections subtly animate and fade in to continually create points of interest, and guide the viewer through the house as though they were at the property.

Parham House & Gardens Homepage web design
Parham House News page web design
Parham House Interactive Map

The site features a draggable and interactive map, with a charming historic drawing of the grounds at its base. The timeline of the properties history, and galleries of the house and grounds are also draggable and interactive across mobile, tablet and desktop devices.

We were fortunate enough to visit the house on several occasions throughout the project, and working with Lady Emma, Mr Barnard and Parham House & Gardens team was an absolute pleasure.

Parham House tablet design
Parham House Plan your visit page design
Parham House Forthcoming Events page design

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