On the site of the last battle fought on British soil, the new visitor centre, which opened on 16 April 2008, will house interpretation of the battle, its prehistory and aftermath, and will include educational and conference facilities, a café, restaurant, shop and staff accommodation.
Designed by award winning architects Gareth Hoskins, the new centre uses sustainably sourced timber and Caithness stone, with a woodchip-burning biomass boiler plant providing the heating. A long wall rising from the Government line bisects the building, screening the car park from the battlefield. The wall pides the building into two areas, with the new exhibition on the battlefield side and all support facilities screened from the battlefield on the other. In addition, the wall provides visitors with access to the roof, giving them a bird’s eye view of the battlefield. The 9 million GBP project Culloden is the largest project undertaken by the National Trust for Scotland and reflects the huge impact the Battle of Culloden had on the course of world history. The project involves restoring the Battlefield to how it looked in 1746 and constructing a state-of-the-art visitor centre with interactive exhibition. Working closely with interpretive designers, archaeologists, landscape architects and local planning authorities, Gareth Hoskins Architects has developed a strategy for the entire 65 hectare site, which is a scheduled ancient monument, to combine transportation, visitor arrival and facilities, and reinstatement and interpretation of the battlefield landscape.
