Pendennis Castle & St Mawes Castle, English Heritage
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![View of a headland in a grey-blue sea, seen through the square gap in a mossy stone wall. A red label is mounted to the right of the gap titled “The view across the estuary”, with a line illustration of the view and key locations indicated.]()
Permanent interpretation and way-finding for two Historic England castles separated by an estuary.
Pendennis Castle & St Mawes Castle, Cornwall 2018, Grade-I Listed Building and Scheduled Ancient Monument, Specialist illustration by Millie Nice and Patrick Biddulph, Lighting design by Dha Designs, Specialist model making by Darius Wilson, Photography by Graham Gaunt.
Oxford House, Bethnal Green, 2019, NHLF funded, Grade II Listed Building, Architecture by Dannatt Johnson Architects.
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![A circular room with rough whitewashed stone walls, wood beamed ceiling, and window openings in recessed alcoves. A visitor plays with one of two canons positioned at the windows. In front, a man walks by a red A-frame sign titled “Desperate defence”]()
Pendennis Castle and St Mawes Castle stand either side of the Fal Estuary in Cornwall. Both castles are Henrician artillery fortifications originally built as part of Henry VIII’s coastal defence programme. Both are Grade I listed and scheduled ancient monuments.
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![A woman and two young people stand around a large horizonal sitemap titled ""Pendennis Castle: Enemies on the Horizon"". Behind them, a path leads up to the castle under a sunny sky.]()
We were appointed as lead consultant for the re-interpretation and re-design of the visitor experiences. Our aim was to provide imaginative and immersive storytelling for visitors across both sites, bringing histories from the Tudor period and the two World Wars to life.
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![A young girl wearing a red jacket uses a pole to load a replica cannon in a room with wood floors and stone walls. Behind her is a video projection of silhouettes of men loading a cannon.]()
We devised a range of different interpretive interventions and installations for both sites, including self-directed exploration and guided tours, hands-on active engagement, character-led narratives, immersive environments, internal and external information panels and children’s trails.
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![Exhibition panels leaning against a white wall in a room with wooden floorboards. The panel is titled “The invasion threat” with maps, images and text. A recessed window on the left gives natural light. A doorway leads to further rooms ahead.]()
We worked closely with the client team and Historic England to develop interpretation that respected the listed buildings and avoid permanent fixings. Interpretation panels lean against walls or are freestanding, and images and videos are projected on stonework. Newly designed furniture was produced from local larch wood, and carved with key historical dates to provide further context for visitors.
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![A room with rough stone walls and a small window letting in natural light. On one wall is a projection of the silhouettes of two seated male figures sharing a drink around a barrel. Opposite the projection is a long wooden bench for visitors to sit.]()
The Tudor Gun Tower consists of four video projections across two floors, together with a single audio track and an interactive cannon. The experience begins with a video of two gunners playing cards and eventually guides visitors to follow the gunners to the top floor where they learn to fire a replica cannon to defend the estuary from a Spanish galleon.
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![A person’s hand moves a red tile in an image puzzle which is inset into a wooden table. The red puzzle tiles feature white line illustrations and must be rearranged to form a picture.]()
Interactives were designed to encourage intergenerational discussion and engagement. Tactile interactives and learning opportunities at St Mawes introduced visitors to languages that would have been spoken onsite, and imagery used during the Tudor period.
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![Two men in military uniforms use technical equipment in a room. One looks through a scope with a plotter and map beneath it.]()
The Pendennis site includes numerous outbuildings. To help visitors fully understand site histories, we stripped out all previous installations to return buildings to their original conditions. The outbuildings are used for live action interpretation by volunteers and historic re-enactors who play the part of WW1 gunners, with opportunities for visitors to join in and use historic equipment.
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![Visitors in a white-walled stone room with several cannons on display and a large illustration of Pendennis Castle on the back wall. Red A-frame text panels provide further information about each gun.]()
Across the two sites, the blend of exhibited artefacts, audio, videos, live action interpretation, way-finding and hands-on interactives offer multiple ways of physically navigating the buildings, learning new skills and understanding the historic context of the castles.
