Background
The Footprint is the first straw bale building in Cumbria, and the first for the National Trust. It is a low environmental impact development and now its up it provides a beautiful and inspirational indoor base for the groups who come to St Catherine’s near Windermere on an educational visit, demonstrating sustainable development in practice. It’s a highly innovative project, not only in the choice of materials that were used to construct it (straw walls, used car tyre foundations, sheeps wool insulation, timber frames, floors and walkways and an oak shingle roof), but in the approach taken to getting it built.
The National Trust used a conventional building company (lambert-gill from Carlisle) for the majority of construction and overseeing the process. However, where possible within the schedule, opportunities for training, skills development and hands on involvement were created, through undertaking aspects of the building as practical courses, most of which were led by Amazon Nails, the UKs leading straw bale building trainers and consultants. Alongside, a number of National Trust staff and hundreds of volunteers helped out in all manner of ways on the building.
The photos on these pages show the courses and the work they undertook, the volunteers working, as well as the St Catherine’s site and some of the other building that went on. And of course, the finished thing!
For more information on the Footprint, see the National Trust website.