The Longshaw Café is the culmination of our ambitious masterplan commissioned by National Trust in 2015 to radically improve capacity and the visitor experience at this important National Trust estate on the edge of Sheffield.
Key public, private and operational spaces were reordered across the Longshaw Estate to transform outdated facilities for the rangers and provide a suite of office space for volunteers and the wider National Trust team.
Longshaw Lodge is grade 2 listed and sits within the Peak District National Park and so therefore posed a very challenging planning context. We involved the planners from the start, taking the design development stage by stage and engaged with users and stakeholders through meetings and an exhibition. The resulting design was approved just as we had conceived of it, without any amendments.
Although popular with visitors, the existing café had very limited capacity and the design had no relationship with the stunning open countryside in which sat. Our design for the new cafe creates a gateway to the Peak Park for visitors by remodelling and extending the former tearoom to create a large, well-equipped indoor and outdoor venue for visitors to meet and enjoy food from the modernised kitchen facilities.
The new building doubles the capacity of the café and creates a new courtyard, sheltered with an open canopy which creates extensive outdoor seating within a woodland setting. The relocation of a substation allowed us to reorganise the spaces within the former stables to create new state-of-the art kitchens and fully refurbished accessible toilets for visitor use.
We fully exploited the café’s unique position, looking over the estate towards Millstone Edge. Our design creates a choice of spaces for visitors to sit, either sheltered under canopies, within the barn-like vaulted hall, sheltered within a courtyard, or in one of the bay windows that frame the stunning views.
This project creates uplifting accessible spaces that create a landmark meeting place where visitors to the Peak Park can take in the landscape and access woodland paths and the kitchen garden.
We have created a landmark building that successfully caters for the many visitors who can enjoy welcoming, inspiring spaces to appreciate the spectacular moorland views within one of the most sensitive and challenging contexts of a grade 2 listed building within a National Park.
It is exactly what I wanted for a World Heritage Site – Perfect
Fountains Abbey General Manager
