Land of Lead and Silver

The key project goals of this National Lottery Heritage Funded project required us to produce a coherent narrative that ‘tells the story’ of each site through impactful, but sensitive interpretation. A series of site visits were conducted to review the current interpretation and consider how best to approach the delivery of the new scheme that we were going to create. Consideration was given to the built heritage, wildlife and geology of each site in order to develop a compelling and wide ranging narrative that would offer engaging content for all visitors. Many of the sites were SSSI or Scheduled Ancient Monuments so choice of materials and installation methods were particularly important, as were the logistics of installing in remote sites with no vehicular access. Given the very hostile environments where installations were going to take place, we specified a very robust system of aluminium powder coated panels, with encapsulated and sealed printed graphics.

We believed that very high quality, well researched, atmospheric reconstruction illustration should form a core part of the interpretation of the derelict mine sites. This served the dual purpose of quickly and excitingly interpreting the site for those who are not natural consumers of interpretation, and also those who do not have English as a first language. This helped towards fulfilling the diversity element of the project’s goals. Creation of the reconstruction illustrations was handled entirely in-house at Maltings, which is one of our studio’s key specialities. We liaised with local experts to get the details just right – making sure the technical elements were as well researched and authentic as possible.

The end results are now installed at several locations and are very effective in bringing the sites to life. We look forward to working on remaining interpretation within the North Pennines National Landscape over the coming years.