The Red Lion was a public house on Egremont’s main high street, near to its famous Castle, a Grade I listed scheduled monument. Structural problems led the Red lion and two adjacent properties to be demolished in 2020. Since then the site has been hoarded off, leaving a gap in the streetscape. Behind the high street a derelict building sits adjacent to the hoarded off site, and forms part of the project.

The brief was developed from an extensive consultation process with local groups and Town Team, carried out by a consultation specialist. This previous work shaped the brief and the types of accommodation. The project seeks to provide new community uses, café, small business unit, and public WCs set around a new public space which links an existing car park to the town centre.

A new Frontage Building will restore the building line along the high street. A colonnade supporting a horizontal roof plane, providing shelter and a civic quality to the building, has a precedent in the historic ‘rude colonnades of wood’ installed to the fronts of shops on the high street. It allows pedestrians to move through the building to a new public space beyond, designed by our friends re-form landscape architecture. The derelict industrial building will be renovated as the Egremont Community Building, with a multi-use space at ground floor and artists’ studios above.