In with the new …

In with the new: opening 30 March 2019

Work on Betteshanger’s new Visitor Centre, encompassing a Green Energy Centre and the Kent Mining Museum has now commenced and is due to open in March 2019.

The new £9.5m state-of-the-art facility will be an architectural icon built to the highest levels of sustainable design (Kent’s best EPC rating and BREEAM Excellent certification). It will provide retail, cycling facilities, education, conferencing, events, gardens and public spaces, as well as offering an outstanding entrance to the 250-acre country park and its exceptional leisure and recreation facilities.

With energy at the core of the Betteshanger offer, celebrating East Kent’s mining heritage will be a key focus. It will showcase the unique story of Kent’s mining communities and profile their heritage through an exciting combination of the Museum, heritage trails and online mining archive. A Green Energy Centre will make use of solar panels and a CHP biomass boiler to generate clean energy for both the Park and the national grid. Visitors to the Park will be able to see energy production, engage with and learn from it.

Betteshanger will deliver a unique opportunity for everyone to see how ‘old energy’ can be transformed into ‘new energy’. It will connect people with energy and energy with people.

Out with the old

November 2018 marks a significant milestone in the development of the Betteshanger Project. With 5 months to go until our state of the art new Visitor Centre opens its doors, it’s time to say goodbye to the original Fowlmead Café/Visitor Centre and Cycle Hire “shed”.

The visitor facilities at the Park will be removed during the week commencing 5 November. Until our new Visitor Centre opens, on 30 March 2019, we will be operating from temporary facilities which will be located in the car park.

The temporary facilities will include a warm, dry space with toilet facilities and limited catering. Our Cycle Hire facility will also be operated from this location. A portion of our mountain bike trails will be re-routed to allow for this move.

We recognise this will have some disruption to your experience at the Park but hope that you’ll bear with us during this time whilst we work on building a better Betteshanger. Safe access will be maintained to the play area, cycle track, mountain bike trails and MY/PT plus the wider Park throughout the development period. Undertaking this work during the winter months will allow us to open our new facilities with landscaped grounds.

Location of temporary visitor facilities
(November 2018 – March 2019)

Start & finish for mountain bike trails
(from October 2018)

Facilities in the new Visitor Centre

Entrance

The 18m wide entrance will feature a ground map of the Kent coalfield and an impressive installation of miners pit checks.

The pit check installation provides an opportunity for you to have your name, or that of a loved one, permanently engraved at the entrance to our world-class facility.

Personalise my pit check

Reception

Your visit to Betteshanger will start here. Find out what there is to see and do at the Park, forthcoming events and how to get the most from a visit.

The reception will also include a range of retail options including local food and crafts.

Kent Mining Museum

Spanning two floors, the Heritage Lottery Funded museum will be dedicated to preserving and displaying the artefacts and memories of the Kent coalfield. It will tell the story of Kent’s coal mining industry, the four collieries and the people and communities associated with them.

Find out more about the Museum

Conference Centre and Learning Studio

A flexible multipurpose space for conferencing, events and learning. The space can be sub-divided into three separate spaces or can be one single space accommodating up to 250 people.

Our Learning Studio will be home of our ‘inspired by energy’ learning programme. Our new programme will encompass exciting workshops and active outdoor learning, outreach talks and illustrated lectures. The Learning Studio will provide space for participants to engage in hand-on, practical workshops. It can be used as a stand-alone space or connected with two further adjacent rooms, with ready access to the Kent Mining Museum.

Cafe

Serving the best local and seasonal produce, 7 days a week. The cafe will seat up to 80 covers internally with additional external seating on the decking area directly in front of the cafe, overlooking the play area.

A huge 5.5m high mosaic mural of The Waiting Miner will be displayed on the café wall. We’re giving you the opportunity to have a picture of yourself, or that of a loved one, featured the mural and in return, you’ll be helping to support the fundraising efforts of the Kent Mining Heritage Foundation.

Put me in the picture

Outdoor Activity Centre

Everything you need to explore the outdoors, including bike hire and cycle servicing by trained bike mechanics.

Green Energy Centre

Exploring green energy production and sustainable principles, the Green Energy Centre will make the connection between fossil fuels and new forms of energy. It will also interpret the sustainable aspects of the building which include a Biomass CHP boiler, photovoltaic panels, solar thermal collectors and rainwater harvesting.

Green Seam

Hadlow College’s award-winning RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show garden, Green Seam, will be relocated to its new home at Betteshanger.

The garden, designed by two of Hadlow College’s Garden Design students, Stuart Towner and Bethany Williams, depicts the transformation of the former colliery into a sustainable park. It shows how pioneer plant species (some of them rare) can colonise and transform hostile environments such as spoil heaps into places of beauty.

Mining-themed play

Alongside our new Visitor Centre and the Kent Mining Museum will be a unique and adventurous coal mining themed playground. The equipment will include five bespoke pieces of equipment:

Pit Head Gear – Climb & Slide.
DOSCO Road Header – Climb-in & Play Vehicle.
Mining Cars x3 Plus Rails.
Coal Step Wobble Stones.
Tipper Truck Slide.

The equipment is being designed and installed by ‘Flights of Fantasy’

Flythrough

Did you know?

Our new visitor centre is 185m long – that’s as long as London’s famous Gherkin building is high. The building sits on 233 piles ranging from depth of 36m to 62m (that’s the equivalent of 14 double decker buses).

Buckle up and join us on a journey through the new building…

Countdown to opening

As we enter the latter stages of the build programme, progress and development changes will become more visible to our visitors. Over the coming months look out for:

November 2018: