King Richard III – Dynasty Death and Discovery is a new visitor centre which tells the fascinating story of the king’s life and death, and the remarkable search and discovery of King Richard III. It is located next to the spot where the remains of the much maligned former Monarch were discovered by the ‘Looking for Richard’ and Leicester University archaeological teams in 2013.
This exciting state-of-the-art visitor centre occupies the recently transformed Alderman Newton’s School. The former school is a stunning Victorian Gothic revival building built partly on the site of the former Grey Friars Church and is in the heart of Leicester’s Old Town. In addition to the existing building, a new building was built to house the grave site which is completed with a glass floor viewing gallery, allowing visitors to view the site where the discovery was made.
BECK were honoured to be appointed as specialist fit out principal contractor and were responsible for all the exhibition spaces over six galleries. Our scope of works included setworks, display cases, props and models, scenic reconstruction, interactive exhibits, graphics and specialist lighting. BECK also fully co-ordinated client procured audio visual hardware and software. BECK were asked to run their programme concurrently with the base build contractors due to the incredibly tight project programme which involved careful management using a series of partial possession and handovers in order to safely merge the two programmes together.
The centre opened its doors to the public on the 26 July 2014, to a fanfare of positive reviews, with projected annual visitors in excess of 200,000; King Richard III is already firmly established as one of the UK’s must visited Heritage sites.
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