Weald and Downland Museum Gateway Building

The Weald and Downland Museum has long needed a new gateway building to improve the visitors enjoyment of the museum. Sole Street which stood on the site has been moved and re-assembled elsewhere to make way for the new buildings by ABIR Architects. The new structures ably provide new café and restaurant, shop, ticketing, exhibition area and conference facilities. We built both the shop frame and the one next to it forming part of the new café facility.

We have a lot of history with the museum, this being the second new building at the museum that has involved The Green Oak Carpentry Company in its construction, the first being the now famous Timber Gridshell building. The timber frame is a composite structure with bolted stainless steel connections rather than carpentry joints connecting the members.

The palette of materials has been carefully chosen; chestnut timber rain-screen cladding, glass, plain clay tile, cleft chestnut shakes, and standing seam metal roof, combine to make a well-crafted building; all as you would expect from a museum of vernacular buildings.

Over 60,000 cleft chestnut shakes adorn the roofs of the new café and shop buildings. All were provided by local craftsman Ben Law, who first established himself with his book on round pole buildings. The large gable over-sails have been well executed and are underlined with finger jointed chestnut cladding from Inwood.

We like the juxtaposition of the new Gateway building with the medieval hall house North Cray, seen in the background. The new building uses modern construction materials such as stainless steel and glass, contrasting to the historic building behind, which is painted in red iron oxide pigmented oil bound distemper, following discovery of evidence that shows this would have been the case at the time.

This is the smaller of the two frames built at our workshops. Beams were cleaned with dry ice to ensure that interruption of the construction process was kept to a minimum. Views from the café across the lake make this a great place for a cuppa and to rest the feet.

The stainless steel flitch plate connections have been nicely expressed with counter-bored fixings and fabricated webs to stiffen the sections. Here we see the column and truss rafter connection to the eave plate with the diagonal strutting.

Close up of the wall frame strutting and roof brace jointing. The ceilings have been underlined with facetted chestnut cladding to complete a highly attractive interior. Solent Engineering carried out the metalwork fabrication for us to a high standard.

Here we see the truss rafter connections to the ridge beam and associated diagonal strutting. Perhaps a bit over complicated? You decide. The stainless steel sections were electro-polished which brightens the surfaces and enhances the contrast to the oak beams.

Column base connection clearly showing the steel flitch fabrication. Polished concrete floors complete the picture.

We think these buildings form an attractive and well-designed new visitors centre for the Weald and Downland Museum and hope they will be a great success to the museum in the years to come. Plan your visit at: www.wealddown.co.uk