Make By Design were awarded the contract to design, manufacture and install the specialist joinery package at the Archway project, a building adjacent to the world famous Roman Baths in Bath, NE Somerset.

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Working with our valued client and heritage specialist Beard Construction over a 24 week design and build programme, Make  By Design designed, manufactured and installed the following items of joinery:

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World Heritage Centre including raked solid oak window reveals, cills and benching.

 

North Learning Centre including curved bench seating incorporating solid oak slats, drawers, plenum, ramps with acoustic properties, curved solid oak display cabinets and a solid oak wall.

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South Learning Centre incorporating Solid oak secondary window glazing, solid oak benching 

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Lunch Room incorporating upholstered seating ,solid oak window shutters and a mild steel powder coated coat and bag storage unit.

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Set at the heart of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the city of Bath, The Roman Baths and Pump Room is a site of international historical and archaeological significance, and attracts over one million visitors each year.

However, dedicated learning space was limited to a single room set in the most congested part of the museum. Our scheme provides a new Clore Learning Centre and publicly accessible Bath World Heritage Centre within a neighbouring group of nineteenth-century buildings. These new spaces connect to The Roman Baths through a vaulted undercroft beneath the street at the Roman ground level. 

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Built as a laundry, boilerhouse and warehouse to service the Victorian spa, the buildings were in need of significant investment and a new public-facing role.

The scheme unlocks the historic spaces by navigating changes in level between three different buildings and across a complex archaeological site. Two generous learning spaces are recovered from the shells of the nineteenth-century fabric, and supported by the essential ancillary functions previously lacking : a generous cloakroom, dedicated WCs, offices and a lunchroom.

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Beneath the city streets, meticulously planned, ramped walkways navigate a way across and through standing archaeology in a part of the site that has been opened to public access for the first time. Part of the undercroft provides a third learning space where, immersed in Bath’s archaeological and historical past, children can try archaeology for themselves.

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Despite many challenges of working during the  COVID19 global pandemic, works were completed on time in January 2021.