C O N T E X T 1 0 9 : M A Y 2 0 0 9 3 Mining history A newly built colliery lamp cabin has been opened at Beamish open air museum in County Durham. Designed by Purcell Miller Tritton, the new building complements the recreated 1913 colliery village, a centrepiece of the museum. The cabin includes spaces where costumed staff will re-enact the miners’ story, and an exhibition area. It was constructed using traditional methods, which meant that the team was denied the use of cranes to lift the timber trusses. The king post truss at the centre of the building’s frame was assembled piece by piece on site. The completed exhibition area shows part of the museum’s collection of miners’ lamps, rescue equipment and mining tools dating from the mid-18th century up to the late-20th century. Soho Lodge, a Grade II listed summerhouse in Soho Square, is being renovated. The conservation team of architect HOK will renovate the timbers (some thought to date back to the 17th century), treating decay and preventing the lodge from further sinking and twisting. The lodge was built in 1875 at the expense of the residents of Soho Square. The Beamish colliery lamp cabin: a new building constructed with traditional methods Barns in the Dales: many are in bad condition. The Fitzwilliam Estate has begun a £150,000 restoration project at Owston’s warehouse in Malton, North Yorkshire. The 18th century building is almost the last physical remains of Navigation Wharf, the place where goods were unloaded, stored and transported to Malton since the middle ages. Eco-pod for dales barn An experimental project that could help to bring disused barns back to life in theYorkshire Dales has been launched by theYorkshire Dales National Park Authority. The authority’s planning committee has approved the temporary use of a free-standing ‘eco-pod’ inside an isolated barn on the Bolton Abbey estate near Skipton. For a year it will be occupied occasionally by staff from architects Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, who will be testing its viability as a place to stay or work. Around 2,000 barns in the national park are classified as being in ‘poor’ or ‘very bad’ condition. The park authority has secured funding fromYorkshire Forward for a feasibility study to assess the economic viability of using pods to restore and then maintain other traditional barns. ‘The beauty of installing a free‑standing pod is that it has no material impact on the internal fabric of the barn,’ says Peter Watson, the authority’s head of planning. Additional funding for the project has come from the authority’s sustainable development fund, which is managed by theYorkshire Dales MillenniumTrust. Natural England ‘too passive’ The IHBC has submitted its response to Natural England’s draft policy statement Future Landscapes. The statement’s Policy 1 declares: ‘Change is a fundamental characteristic of landscapes. Our future landscapes should emerge as a result of planned interventions, set within the context of a long-term vision’. The IHBC comments that ‘while the institute does not disagree with this, it seems to be a statement of fact rather than a policy. We are not clear why it needs to be stated in this way.’ Policy 2 states that ‘the character, condition and quality of England’s future landscapes should be built on an understanding of existing landscape character, through a landscape character approach.’ The institute comments that it strongly supports this policy. ‘We are
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