The Northam Burrows Visitor Centre opened last Friday. Located just a stone’s throw from the award-winning Blue Flag Beach at Westward Ho! In Torridge, North Devon, the venue is already becoming a focal point within the 254-hectare park and replaces a much older building, which had undergone little change, since its original installation in 1984. The new building is clad in larch wood and the multiple wings of the centre have been designed to nestle discreetly into the surrounding dunes.
The centre houses a café, an exhibition centre with mini aquarium and displays of local wildlife, historic landscapes, and innovative interactive digital sections with a hands-on approach for children to tap into. A new accessible changing places facility for people with disabilities has also been provided. Office and meeting room accommodation for the rangers and partner organisations are now airy, bright and better insulated against the Atlantic weather this part of the coast sometimes experiences.
The Centre has been funded by £1.2M from the Governments Coastal Communities Fund and £400K from the Getting Building fund. The bids for funding were facilitated and supported by Heart of the South West Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) and the Council’s Economic partners, North Devon+. Like many local businesses and projects, the work programme has had to tiptoe around pandemic restrictions and shortages of cement and other materials but has been a great example of collaboration in difficult times between funders, architects, engineers and builders.
Materials have been re-used where possible or upgraded to better insulation properties to add to the overarching green environmental approach adopted for the project, with an estimated saving of 3.6 tons of carbon per year.
Hills were glad to be a part of this successful project, providing project management, quantity surveying and principal designer services.
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