Tower Wood Outdoor Education Centre, Windermere

When I had a phone call from Lancashire County Council asking if I would be interested in building a log cabin in the Lake District I had trouble containing my excitement, after a brief pause I calmly replied that I might be and casually asked what it entailed.

This is our first lottery funded project to construct a conference and education facility complete with kitchen, cloakroom and Wcs. The project was to construct a log building that would replace porta cabins on an existing site on the edge of Windermere. The design is a little out of the ordinary as it was to be positioned on a difficult site wedged in between an access road and a stream, nestled in amongst trees. The overall size of the building is approximately 170 square metres and is constructed using 202mm laminated square sawn log with a roof covering of katepal shingles and a treatment of osmo wood stain and preservative. In total we had three and a half lorry loads delivered from Finland.

The building was constructed using a telehandler and featured our guest from Finland Kari Mesimaki.

Right from the outset this project has been excellent. From the design team at Lancashire Property and Works to the staff at Tower Wood who were very helpful and hospitable - keeping us fed with cake and coffee to get us through the some of the wettest and coldest weather we have experienced on a project.

We were fortunate enough to be invited to the official opening ceremony of the centre, the first time we have had any kind of recognised opening of one of our buildings. It was well attended and was good to see people having an enjoyable time and using our cabin.

View the construction sequence

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