Creswell Crags in Derbyshire is one of Britain’s most important archaeological and geological sites. It is essentially a gorge cut into the limestone rock, fractured by a series of fissures and caves which provide evidence of human and animal activity dating back 50,000 years.

The project received an RIBA Award for Design Excellence (2011), RIBA East Midlands Low Carbon Award (2010) and was named Museum of the Year in the Renaissance Heritage Awards 2010.

The new museum and education centre interprets the morphology of the site and its collection of artefacts. The building acts as a dramatic gateway to the ‘crags’. The fragmented form of the new structure defines an intriguing descending sequence of movement that arrives at the foot of the gorge ready to transport visitors back to a landscape once inhabited by Ice Age hunters.