Modern design houses stories from deep time

The Jurassic Coast is getting its first dedicated fossil museum thanks to National Lottery Funding and one collector’s generosity, reports Steve Menary.

Over the past four decades, Steve Etches has collected more than 2,200 fossils from along the area of the Jurassic coastline that he lives in.

“I don’t need the money at my age,” says Etches. “I don’t need cars or holidays on cruise ships and I want to keep all these artefacts in the area they were discovered.”

The area is the coastline near the tiny Purbeck village of Kimmeridge, which has a population of only around 100 people but is the unlikely location for a new £5 million museum.

The tiny village nestled into the Purbeck coastline has needed a new village hall for years. The existing hall dates back to World War One, but in a time of austerity and government cuts funding that sort of project was always unlikely.

That all changed in 2011, when local resident John Woodward came on board. Suddenly, plans for a village hall that could house some fossils became a sustainable fossil museum that would double as a village hall.

The Museum of Jurassic Marine Life and the Kimmeridge Village Hall Trust merged to become the Kimmeridge Trust. With a new focus, the project attracted millions of pounds in funding.

With the Heritage Lottery Fund alone putting up nearly £3 million, other donors have come forward. These range from the Clore Duffield Foundation to Dorset County Council and Perenco, the oil company drilling in the region. Different architects had worked on the old plans that had the village hall element to the fore. As the trust changed the focus, a new designer was appointed.

London-based practice Kennedy O’Callaghan Architects were brought on board and charged by the trust with meeting a brief that had a zeal for sustainability at its heart but also a need to fit in with the local Purbeck vernacular.

“The activity and learning side of the museum has had a major impact with the design,” says Mr Woodward, who along with his wife Margaret was awarded an MBE in the 2015 Queen’s Birthday Honours’ List and has been the driving force behind the project.

In addition to exhibition space, the museum will include a workshop where Mr Etches, watched by the visitors, can work on the fossils that he continues to rescue from the Jurassic Coast.

Kimmeridge attracts around 150,000 visitors a year. The museum’s business plan aims to attract around a quarter of those tourists and admission fees will be £8 for adults and £4 for children. With 30 parking spaces and more available in nearby fields, the trust anticipates attracting school groups but the sustainable ideals stretch beyond the business plan.

Mr Woodward adds:

“The other design factor I put in was that running costs must be minimal.”

The design drawn up by Kennedy O’Callaghan includes seven geo-thermal boreholes with heat exchangers at the bottom, while the roof features a 100 square metre array of 26 photovoltaic (PV) cells.

Renewable Design Company is supplying the geothermal heating system, which powers under-floor heating from Warmer Floors. This specification allied to PV cells from Viridian Solar and installed by sub-contractor Elliott Roofing, is expected to produce total utilities bills of around £170 a year.

To put that figure in context, the footprint of the building footprint is 652 square metres. The upper ground floor and mezzanine measure 472 square metres and the lower ground floor 323 square metres. Overall, this provides a total gross internal area of 795 square metres shared between the museum and village hall.

“What we are trying to do is allow the space to be flexible,” says practice principal Ken O’Callaghan. “Steve can use space for temporary exhibitions in the summer, when there is no education demand.”

Kennedy O’Callaghan’s design included a timber frame, which is being clad with wooden insulation supplied by Steico. The design also includes timber louvres with dampers behind supplied by Airsun Systems, while Kennedy O’Callaghan also specified wooden windows, which Living Wood has supplied.

The exterior walls are local Purbeck stone. The design team did look at Purbeck stone on the roof, but the extra weight and construction time made this impossible.

Mr O’Callaghan explains:

“Purbeck stone is irregular slabs, so the workmanship is longer. Local workmen told us that it takes four times longer to do a Purbeck stone roof rather than slate.”

This would have added £100,000 to the cost. So Glendyne natural slate has been used on the roof instead with the exception of the section featuring the PV cells.

“Most PV cells are designed to go on the roof but these cells fit side-by-side and toe-to-toe so it’s a whole roof array,” explains Mr O’Callaghan, who adds: “It took a long time to create the details.”

With the onus on sustainability and reducing running costs, the design of the museum eschews air conditioning but fossils need to be kept at a relative humidity (RH) of 40.

The fossil gallery section also has just one window, which will be shuttered most of the time, so this section of the building includes basic mechanical ventilation.

“We need mechanical ventilation to cope with the visitor numbers but it’s not air conditioning,” says Mr O’Callaghan. The PV cells will power this ventilation, while 40 RH for the fossils will be achieved by using Art-Sorb, which is a moisture sensitive silica material that absorbs and desorbs moisture in order to offset changes in external relative humidity.

London-based consultants Event Communications, which has experience in museum design, are designing the exhibition space.

Event’s design includes an innovative CGI projection so that visitors can see what the Kimmeridgian Seas looked like in pre-historic times.

In addition to housing around 200 fossils of the 2,200 fossils collected by Steve Etches in illuminated cabinets, CGI projections onto the ceiling will show the fossils as living breathing animals in their natural habitat.

This projection will change constantly from a sea of tranquillity to the primal violence that typified the everyday fight for survival in the Kimmeridgian Seas 150 million years ago.

Mr Woodward adds:

“The concept is that you have life above and death below and you are coming into aquarium 150 million years ago. When they die, they morph into the fossils below.

“From our point of view, it’s a subject that’s at the academic end of the spectrum and we wanted to make it simple. You will struggle to find a Latin name anywhere. It’s all about the art of the collector.”

When the trust went looking for a contractor to build the actual museum, the size of the project presented a quandary.

“We were in a difficult position,” explains Mr Woodward. “We were too small for the big boys and too big for the local firms.”

As a result, those companies shortlisted to bid were larger local outfits rather than the regional divisions of national contractors. Raymond Brown edged out bids from Dorchester-based Acheson Construction, Poole outfit Greendale and Herbert Drew from New Milton in Hampshire to win the contract.

Work started on site in the summer of 2015. Nestled in the hillside, the levels have been a challenge for the design and construction team but also enabled Kennedy O’Callaghan to gain height in their design.

The 3,157 square metres plot for the museum is opposite the Clavells restaurant and in the heart of the tiny village, which is in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

As an unused space in the centre of the village, the site was an obvious place for the museum but the site had not been built on for good reason.

Mr Woodward adds:

“There used to be a spring there, where the cattle were brought to feeding. There had also been a barn there in the fifteenth century but nothing since. We needed twentieth century technology to be able to use the site.”

Due to the state of the site, which was owned by local landowner the Smedmore Estate, Raymond Brown’s construction team had to sink rafts of piles before laying foundations.

With a particularly clement winter in southern England work has progressed well. The museum is on course to open in the summer of 2016.

“We are going to explain what the Jurassic Coast is about and what it does; there’s nowhere else that does that,” says Mr Woodward, whose plans will not end with the museum opening.

With around 2,000 of Steve Etches’ artefacts needing storage space, the trust has longer term plans for another part of the museum to be located at a nearby site at Blackmanston.

Here the trust hopes to provide storage for more artefacts and hostel-style accommodation for visitors to both the museum and the Jurassic Coast, as the museum and Steve Etches give-away provides a catalyst to attract even more visitors to the area.