‘Lincoln Castle Revealed’ is an exciting project that will see the opening up of the Castle to visitors.
It will include a complete Castle Wall Walk, access to the Victorian Prison, an exhibition of the Magna Carta and Charter of the Forest as well as a new Heritage Skills Centre.
Robert Woodhead Ltd won a competitive bid in August 2011 to construct the new Heritage Skills Centre. This new building is the first within Lincoln Castlefor over 100 years and the aim is for the building to be BREEAM* ‘very good’. Work started on the Skills Centre in October 2011 and is due for completion in September 2012.
Paul Atkin, Team Leader Stonemason and Conservation Department, Lincoln Cathedral, said, “We have quite a good reputation throughout the country for training apprentices and trainees. We wanted to bring it to the public… The Centre will be the ideal place to do it. We were involved right from an early stage; we were involved in the planning before the plans were approved, making sure that the workshops would be ideal…”
“The Heritage Skills Centre is a separate project from ‘Lincoln Castle Revealed’ but fits into the whole of a regenerated castle site and is actually offering a better experience to the visitor,” highlights Mary Powell, Tourism Development Manager at Lincolnshire County Council. Mary continues, “The reason that the Heritage Skills Centre is so important is that I think visitors should realise that these buildings need constant attention and you need people with traditional skills to do it. The fact that we are teaching these people on site in the skills of stone masonry and all the other heritage skills actually has a perfect fit with a visitor attraction of a Castle which is actually changing all the time… We are writing new pages of the Castle history.”
For more details on this exciting project look out for the “Heritage Skills Centre Lincoln Castle - Revealed” film on the Robert Woodhead YouTube channel
* BREEAM is the foremost environmental assessment method and rating system for buildings. It sets the standard for best practice in sustainable building design, construction and operation.