Windermere Jetty Museum of Boats, Steam and Stories, Cumbria

The excellent cafe of the new Windermere Jetty Museum of Boats, Steam and Stories must have the best view in England. When I visited in early May, a Canada goose had already built herself a big nest on the wooden jetty outside, right beside the new plaque unveiled by Prince Charles at the museum’s opening in April. 

That part of the jetty was then out of bounds because of the baby goslings, but it won’t be as they fledge their nest.

Nothing moves fast in the Lake District and that is one of the attractions of this place, but the complications and delays that have held up the Windermere Jetty’s completion have been a source of frustration for more than a decade. 

Located in the Lake District National Park, a Unesco world heritage site, the £20m museum has been designed by the award-winning architecture studio Carmody Groake and principally funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. 

It is the modern successor to the Windermere Steamboat Museum, which was founded on the site by local steam enthusiast George Pattinson in 1977 and closed in 2006. The museum and collection were taken over by the Lakeland Arts Trust, which had ambitious plans to restore the internationally important boat collection and redevelop the unique site in a new way.

Historically, Lakeland Arts has been responsible for Abbot Hall Art Gallery in nearby Kendal, an exemplar for high-quality art exhibitions in the Lake District, as well as the Museum of Lakeland Life and Industry. 

In 2001, the organisation opened Blackwell, a stunning arts and crafts house overlooking Windermere, built in 1901 by WH Baillie Scott as a family holiday home for a wealthy Manchester brewer. It was carefully restored to its original condition before opening to the public in its centenary year.

The obvious appeal of taking on the former steamboat museum was the opportunity to develop a third museum site in a fabulous location with direct access to the lake. 

But redeveloping the museum, restoring the important historic boat collections and transforming the site became a 12-year challenge. At various points throughout, the trust must have wondered whether it had made the right decision; it was a brave, but risky project. 

Windermere Jetty is one of the only contemporary buildings to be constructed on the shores of the lake in more than 50 years. “We have tried to balance the area’s picturesque and industrial histories,” says the architect Andy Groarke. 

He and Kevin Carmody have created a cluster of seven timber- and copper-clad buildings inspired by traditional vernacular boathouses and barns. They have also incorporated the arts and crafts aesthetic of the early 1900s present at Blackwell and many other “modern” country houses in the area.

The visitor journey aims to engage boating enthusiasts and casual tourists alike. Exhibition designer Real Studios has created five themed displays in the central hall: Just Visiting, Life of Luxury, War & Innovation, Spirit of Adventure, and Speed. 

Each tell varied stories of the people whose lives are linked to the boat collection, blending artworks, historic photographs, film and sound with the objects, but always coming back to the vessels on show.

For the first time, more than half the collection, which ranges from Victorian steam launches to record-breaking speedboats of the 1980s, has gone on display. The associated stories range from the everyday to the extravagant, from Beatrix Potter’s little tarn rowing boat, which the writer used for sketching and fishing, to the 50ft luxuriously designed 1896 steam launch Branksome, the flagship of the fleet. 

My favourite is actually on the water and looks set to dash out on to the lake – Jane, a stylish open motorboat, was built in 1938 by the Chris Craft Corporation of Florida, US, and appears like she is straight out of the film Some Like It Hot. But with a 10mph speed limit on Windermere, Jane’s speeding days are probably over.

Overall, Windermere Jetty has an effective and creative approach to display, which is so often missing from transport or engineering-related museums hampered by large objects that may be difficult to present in anything but serried ranks. 

The museum also shows the potential of what must once have been a special-interest venue, now part of a wider, arts-orientated organisation with a broader and more enticing approach for different audiences. The architectural design and layout of the venue and its park landscape create a strong environmental connection between people, boats and water, merging the leisure and industrial heritage of the area.

The museum also features an open-access conservation workshop where visitors can watch and talk to the skilled conservation boat builders. The team employs traditional boat-building methods, engineering and boat-finishing skills, and shares its expertise through training, apprentice and volunteer programmes. 

The museum showcases the quality of their work as visitors can see live conservation and the finished boats on display, as well as on the lake. Before the original museum was established here, the site had for decades been a working gravel-extraction plant, set against the spectacular lakeland scenery. There is now a covered wet dock to house boats that can still be used, which apparently otters glide into frequently. 

On the lakeside there are new wooden jetties that enable visitors to disembark from the regular Windermere cruise boats and join special historic steamboat lake outings from the museum. 

My guess is that both these features probably need to be scaled up to contribute more effectively to the venue’s income. I watched two well-filled cruise boats dock at the jetty, but nobody got off to visit. We took one of the lake cruises (an extra charge on museum admission) on the Edwardian steam launch Osprey, which was pleasant on a fine day, but can only carry about 20 passengers, most of them outside. 

The two-man crew were excellent guides and demonstrators, explaining the intricate workings of the launch (which somehow was still fuelled by Welsh steam coal) but can this really be a cost-effective operation? They may need a second boat in high season.

My worry is how Lakeland Arts can make this venue a sustainable project. It is certainly a high-quality, well designed indoor-outdoor museum and I would recommend a visit to anyone. But it is not yet geared up to be a successful visitor attraction. 

Initial marketing, publicity and signage are poor, and the museum appeared underprepared for its first summer season. There seemed little awareness even in the surrounding area that Windermere Jetty is open and ready to receive visitors. 

This museum needs to be better and more widely promoted, particularly with more environmental alternatives to the car. It is a good 20 minutes’ walk from the bus and boat terminal at Bowness, a distance that most people are not prepared to stroll these days. 

Arrival by boat would be pleasant, but it is not obvious how you do this at the boat terminal and it is certainly not clearly advertised as an option. There are no special deals yet with the boat company, which I would have expected. 

I hope Windermere Jetty has a successful first season and makes the crucial transition from pioneer capital project to sustainable operation without a struggle. This will almost certainly require a different approach to Lakeland Arts’ experience in running an art gallery and a country house, but I feel confident it can be achieved and look forward to returning next year to see how they are getting on.

Windermere Jetty has been a long time in its creation, and one of it’s most outstanding achievements is that Lakeland Arts, a relatively small arts and heritage trust in Cumbria, had the courage, ambition and vision to create this outstanding new-build right in the heart of the Unesco world heritage site of the Lake District. 

The museum’s form and function, modern beauty and that it straddles people’s stories and contributions to the Lake District of the past, present and future, combine to make this a substantial accomplishment. 

There has been a series of vital adverse factors that made opening such a challenge, just like most museums have, so we are indebted to those who have enabled this new venue. 

This includes the determination of our previous chief executive, Gordon Watson; the vision and attention to detail of architect and design teams; the incredible craftsmanship, skill and dexterity of the boat conservation team; and the constructive challenge and support of planners and technical teams.