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PROJECT REPORT: HERITAGE & HISTORIC
LIMITED PALETTE
Feilden+Mawson was appointed at RIBA Stage 2 to develop a scheme which reinstated original elements but also introduced a limited palette of materials and colours to make additions “cohesive but also distinct”
wanted a transparent lift to enable visitors to read the interior of the building as they moved vertically between fl oors. A degree of transparency was ultimately achieved by using mirrors on the lift’s interior. Some ambitious opening up of the
keep structure was required in the design in order to create a fully accessible and fi re compliant building – it can now
accommodate up to 500 people at any one time – and ensure at least two means of escape from any location inside.
Precision tunnelling
Creating a new doorway through the three-metre-thick north face of the keep at ground level meant precision tunnelling through solid stone. The structural engineer developed a clever metal structure that could be progressively inserted and bolted together inside the one-metre wide
opening to maintain structural integrity as 100 mm sections of wall were removed. The
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painstaking process took six months. “If they had tunnelled a little bit too far to the right or to the left we would have been in trouble, potentially hitting a buttress or a retained Norman sill, which at would have been a disaster as far as Historic England were concerned,” says Davidson, adding that the same opening served as the entrance point for the main contractor to bring in all the project’s steel work. Another opening was created on the east side of the keep to enable wheelchair access to the principal fl oor via a bridge connected to the 1960s museum block east extension. “The client wanted to make sure that anyone needing assistance to get up to the principal fl oor was still brought in on a very noble historic route and wasn’t squirrelled away on some weird back access staircase,” said Davidson.
Mix & match
While the bridge itself is modern with a timber fl oor and glazed roof and walls, the design of the door opening had
ADF JUNE 2026
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