Conservation & Heritage Issue 50 Winter 2025/Spring 2026 - Flipbook - Page 103
Ightham Mote
Infr astructure Project,
Visitor Reception and Shop
A low-carbon, contemporary visitor centre that combines traditional and modern
materials and building techniques.
With its timber frame, exposed hempcrete walls, sweet
chestnut and lime render cladding, the new building for
the National Trust wears its environment credentials on its
sleeves while providing an enhanced experience for visitors.
With Life-cycle analysis showing embodied carbon emissions
of under 500kg/m2CO2e, it outperforms the RIBA’s
Sustainable Outcomes guidance for 2025 by over 25%.
reinstated, walled garden encourages visitors to explore more
of the estate than before, and helps the Trust to manage
visitor flows at peak times.
The proposals were developed over a number of years in close
collaboration between the Ightham Mote estate team, Colvin
& Moggridge, and wider design team including engineers
and heritage advisors. Together, the team considered several
locations and forms for the new building testing its impact
on the historic setting alongside factors such as visitor
accessibility and legibility, as well as impact on flooding
and archaeology. Siting the new building at the edge of the
walled garden, in a central location, was felt to provide the
optimum balance while maintaining the magical journey
down to the mansion house itself during which, the stone
and timber building gradually reveals itself to visitors.
Project description
Reed Watts and landscape architects, Colvin & Moggridge,
have completed a series of improvements at the National
Trust’s Ightham Mote in Kent, a Grade 1 listed building and
Scheduled Monument.
Alongside landscape improvements, sustainable drainage
systems and new parking, the scheme provides a new building
to house the visitor reception and shop.
The new building has been designed as a contemporary
structure in contrast to, but with references back, to the
manor house. This expresses an ambition to show how
new architecture can sit comfortably with the old and
acknowledges that sites like Ightham Mote have evolved
The new building and entrance provides a generous and
flexible space for visitors to orientate themselves before
approaching the historic, 700 year old manor house and the
wider estate. Its location at the southern end of the newly
Below, external view of Ightham Mote, visitor reception and shop
photography by Fred Howarth
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