EPPING FOREST DISTRICT MUSEUM

CLIENT : EPPING FOREST DISTRICT COUNCIL

Having been involved from day one, and having worked with Epping Forest District Council on their original concepts and lottery bid scheme, we were delighted to be appointed alongside architects Hawkins Brown to deliver the refurbishment and extension of Epping Forest District Museum in Waltham Abbey.

The museum already occupied a Tudor house and its Victorian neighbour - an extension of the visitor space into the first floor of the adjacent 1980s library building was also intended to consolidate the service’s stores, bringing much of the collection on site. Our brief was to deliver a museum which better supported the team’s own exhibitions so while a small permanent display was part of our scope, our focus was on planning, layout, infrastructure and lighting. The centrepiece is the innovative ‘Core’ gallery, surrounded on all sides by secure stores - windows into which allow curators to change displays in seconds by pulling out a new picture rack, or placing a recently-unpacked object on a window sill.

It was so important to everyone that this project retained and built on the local affection in which the previous museum was held, so it is great to see user reviews calling it ‘brilliantly modernised’ and ‘just what a local museum should be’.