Press Releases

St Fagans: National History Museum on the outskirts of Cardiff have appointed a team of architects, engineers and exhibition designers who will be assisting in working up plans for the re-development of Wales’s most visited heritage attraction.

In March 2010, the iconic open-air museum was awarded a Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) grant of £450,000 to develop detailed plans to make major improvements and transform the visitor experience.

The project named ‘Making History’ includes aspirations to redesign the current main entrance and build more gallery spaces, with the aim of extending the narrative timeline to tell the stories of the Welsh people from the earliest human inhabitation to the present day.

Head of St Fagans: National History Museum, Bethan Lewis said:

“The appointment of a high calibre team of consultants will allow us to drive the Making History project forward.

“Investing in St Fagans will create an exciting development at the heart of Welsh tourism that will benefit the whole of Wales.”

The project team includes:

- Architect (main building): Purcell Miller Tritton. www.pmt.co.uk

- Architect (new building): Feildon Clegg Bradley. www.fcbstudios.com

- Exhibition Designers: Haley Sharpe Design. www.haleysharpe.com

- Landscape Architects: TEP. www.tep.uk.com

- Structural Engineers: Arup. www.arup.com

- Mechanical and Electrical Engineers: Arup www.arup.com

- Construction, Design and Management Consultants: Davis Langdon. www.davislangdon.com

- Project Managers, Business Plan Consultants, Quantity Surveyors: Focus Consultants. www.focus-consultants.co.uk

- Accessibility Consultants: Vision Sense Equality Solutions. www.visionsense.co.uk

The contractors were appointed after an open competition in line with EU legislation. It is hoped that a second stage application to secure the bulk of the HLF funding will be approved in the autumn of 2012.

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For more information and images, please contact Catrin Mears, Corporate Communications Officer (029) 2057 3185 / 07920 027067 catrin.mears@museumwales.ac.uk

or

Iwan Llwyd, Communications Officer on (029) 2057 3486 / 07920 027054 iwan.llwyd@museumwales.ac.uk

- St Fagans: National History Museum is an open-air museum on the outskirts of Cardiff and is Wales’s most popular heritage attraction with over 600,000 visitors annually. St Fagans contains over 40 buildings that have been moved from locations all around Wales and re-erected at the Museum; buildings include a post office, farmhouses and a medieval church.

- Using money raised through the National Lottery, the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) sustains and transforms a wide range of heritage for present and future generations to take part in, learn from and enjoy. HLF has supported 33,900 projects, allocating £4.4billion across the UK. Website: www.hlf.org.uk

- Amgueddfa Cymru operates seven national museums across Wales.

o St Fagans: National History Museum, Cardiff

o Big Pit: National Coal Museum, Blaenafon

o National Museum Cardiff

o National Roman Legion Museum, Caerleon

o National Slate Museum, Llanberis

o National Waterfront Museum, Swansea

o National Wool Museum, Dre-fach Felindre