Information Centre for Lake District Castle

Client: Third Millenium Muncaster Ltd

Location: Cumbria

The brief was to site an Information Centre near the entrance to Muncaster Castle, a Grade 1 listed building, within the Lake District National Park. Its function would be to house a number of exhibits, graphic displays, ticket office and toilet block. It was recognised that obtaining planning permission could be a major problem.

Initial designs proved to be way outside the budget available. Conscious that Pinelog, specialists in the design and build of timber buildings had great experience in designing buildings for environmentally sensitive areas, the owner Iona Frost-Pennington approached them. Pinelog's architects were able to completely redesign the scheme to produce an attractive building that would cost just one third of that originally quoted.

Pinelog's architects proposed an eight sided, cone shaped timber building with a low overhanging roof. To break up the exterior lines the roof was supported by eight faceted timber columns.

Detailed meetings at an early stage with the Lake District Park authorities, interested conservation bodies and planning authorities ensured that the plans subsequently passed all the planning stages without modification and within four months from commencement on site the building was ready for the holiday season.

The building is of timber frame construction with Rockwool insulating bats, vapour control layers and an internal split log finish to provide a sandwich walling detail. The cladding is half-round redwood logs placed vertically to give a deeper profile. The roof has tiles made from local Cumbrian slate.

Internally, the new Information Centre has a dramatic cathedral style roof with glazed lantern roof panels which provide high levels of natural light at all times of the day.