Revealed: Team to create new vision at Castle Museum

A NEW vision for York’s 80-yearold Castle Museum, housed in what had previously been the city’s debtors and women’s prison, has been placed in the hands of architects whose recent work includes the rejuvenation of a medieval quadrangle at the University of Oxford.

The museum’s redevelopment, unveiled two years ago, will see a new building next to the site of the current car park that will link the former prisons, and a riverside walkway that will form part of York Council’s “castle gateway” regeneration scheme, which also takes in Fossgate, Walmgate and Piccadilly.

The appointment of three firms of architects, as well as engineers and landscape designers, means that design work on the first stage of the project can begin, in advance of a funding campaign.

Paul Lambert, head of strategy at York Museums Trust, said competition for the contracts had been intense.

“The number of applicants for the project has been phenomenal,” he said.

“We are thrilled that we now have our stage one design team in place and we look forward to working with them on the next steps in realising our ambitious plans for the museum.

“We are continuing to work closely with the council and English Heritage so that our plans enhance and complement the wider vision for the Castle Gateway.”

London-based Alison Brooks Architects, who will work on the museum with two other practices, were behind the reimagining of the 800-year-old Cohen Quadrangle at Oxford’s Exeter College at the University of Oxford. When the development was originally announced, Reyahn King, the chief executive of York Museums Trust, inset, said: “York Castle Museum sits in one of York’s most historically significant sites. We believe there is huge potential for this whole area to be transformed into a much more inviting and usable public space which will help attract hundreds of thousands of extra visitors to this part of the city.”

The museum was created in the 1930s by John Lamplugh Kirk, a Hull doctor and obsessive collector, who, having settled in Pickering, decided to display the objects he had amassed.

The highlight was Kirkgate, a recreation of a late Victorian street, which he named after himself. It was the first of its kind in Britain, but Dr Kirk died two years after its opening and never saw its success.