Sunday 24 May marked five years since the Discovery Centre at Rye Harbour Nature Reserve first opened to the public.
The prestigious building was made possible thanks to support from the community led by the Friends of Rye Harbour Nature Reserve, plus a generous donation from the Layton family and so many others. Sussex Wildlife Trust also received a grant of over half a million pounds from The National Lottery Heritage Fund for its Discover Rye Harbour project, which transformed the way visitors engage with the natural and cultural heritage of the reserve.
A spokesperson for Sussex Wildlife Trust said, “We wanted to transform people’s engagement in, and conservation of, the special natural environment and wider heritage of the nature reserve creating a fantastic resource for thousands of visitors. Visitors of all ages can learn more about the rare and special wildlife at the reserve through school excursions and adult education. Five years on and we’ve achieved more than we could have imagined. We expect to have welcomed more than one million visitors by the end of 2026.”
In 2022 the state-of-the-art building won the Public and Community Award at the Sussex Heritage Awards. Cliff Dean, chair of the Friends of Rye Harbour Nature Reserve at the time, praised the architect Stuart Allen saying: “What inspiration it was to provide binoculars along the “contemplation ledge”, giving some visitors their first close views of Avocets, Egrets or Brent Geese.”
The building is designed to have a big impact on the community and a small one on the environment. Clad in responsibly sourced sweet chestnut panels from a coppice woodland near Hastings, it sits atop 1.2m concrete stilts to withstand regular saltwater flooding. Ninety solar panels on the roof provide renewable energy, with the goal of making the building self-sustaining. Rockwool insulation, built-in ventilation panels, and an air source heat pump for underfloor heating all reduce reliance on conventional heating and cooling.
The Friends of Rye Harbour Nature Reserve have around 2,000 members, who have been raising money and volunteering for more than 50 years working with the Sussex Wildlife Trust to conserve the landscape, to protect wildlife and provide a great visitor experience.
Image Credits: Rebecca Brooker , Emma Chaplin , Rebecca Brooker .