Abberton Reservoir Visitor Centre with Cambrian Slate

BMI Redland Cambrian Slates were particularly appropriate for the new Abberton Reservoir Visitor Centre, which is operated by Essex Wildlife Trust and owned by Essex & Suffolk Water, as they can be positioned at pitches as low as 15°, as required for this roof.

“This was a particularly hard project as the building is round with vertical walls and the roof comes to a point like a tee pee. The BMI Redland Cambrian Slate tiles were design compatible and of a very high quality. They’re also reconstituted slate which looks extremely good whilst being cost effective, ” explains Project Architect Andrew Yeats.

The old wildlife centre was demolished in March this year as part of Essex & Suffolk Water’s Abberton Scheme to help secure future water supplies to the Essex area. The site of the old centre will be flooded on completion of the Abberton Scheme. The new visitor centre which overlooks the reservoir is twice the size of the old one and includes a large viewing area, shop and education and meeting rooms.

“We had outgrown the old centre,” says Liz Huxley, Centre Manager at Abberton Reservoir. “It no longer met our requirements for multi-use and we couldn’t really handle big groups of visitors. Now though there’s so much more space and the school groups can even have their own room and facilities. It’s so important to preserve our country’s wildlife and now we have a new visitor centre with education, meeting rooms and better visitor facilities we can pass that message onto others”.