infocus
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PROJECT
Robinsons Brewery Cumbria
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SERVICES
Civil, Structural and Geo-environmental Engineering
Robinsons Brewery needed a new facility in Cumbria to act as a distribution hub for the delivery of beer, brewed in their Unicorn Brewery in Stockport, to their network of pubs across the county. A site was identified at Backbarrow in the Lake District National Park. The site, which was a former timber yard, lay directly on the A590 providing fast links for deliveries from the south. The requirement was to create a new 1,200m2 warehouse and office building with parking for the delivery fleet and staff.
The project entailed the demolition of redundant buildings on the site, to make space for the new warehouse and office, but retained the main premises of the timber merchant who was to become a tenant and would remain operational throughout the project.
The new L-shaped building was designed in two parts: the warehouse is a steel-portal-framed structure but the office wing is load-bearing masonry with exposed oak roof trusses and natural stone elevations.
Drainage design was heavily influenced by the site’s rural location directly beside the River Leven which, in the 2009 floods, had risen dramatically and flooded the village downstream of the site. Surface water drainage was discharged to the river at a heavily attenuated flow rate to contribute to local flood mitigation measures. Due to the distance to the nearest public sewer foul drainage had to be treated on site, in a package plant, before discharge into the river. All these drainage measures required the approval of the Environment Agency and South Lakeland District Council.
