The Story of Emily, Cornwall

2025 RIBA South West & Wessex Award
2025 RIBA South West & Wessex Building of the Year sponsored by EH Smith

The Story of Emily, Cornwall
Stonewood Design for private client
Contract value: Confidential
GIA: 2,841m²

A museum celebrating the life of humanitarian Emily Hobhouse, who campaigned against the UK’s use of concentration camps in the Boer War, The Story of Emily builds upon a growing legacy of architectural patronage, being by the same team as the 2023 RIBA Award-winning Roman Villa Experience at The Newt in Somerset. Here in Liskeard, south-east Cornwall, an engaging and immersive visitor experience has been orchestrated through careful planning of the site that maintains a range of significant existing features, including historic agricultural buildings, mature trees and traditional stone walls. 

Stonewood Design has thoughtfully situated the collection of new buildings to avoid negatively impacting this historically significant place, while enhancing the site’s overall character and its ability to welcome many more visitors in a fully inclusive and legible way.

With both refurbished and new buildings beautifully intertwined with nature and landscaped areas, the plans are skilfully composed. Displaying great attention to detail regarding the form, scale, space, light and materials used, the buildings show ambition as they strive for the conservation of some of the structures on site but also to preserve the culture and history behind them.  Local stone has been used for the new staff housing and ancillary buildings, including the café, with contemporary details and features such as frameless windows incorporated. High-quality, well-considered and executed with precision throughout, these make for a delightful and functional suite of buildings, for both staff and visitors. 

In addition to these vernacular-inspired structures, bold new architectural interventions such as the fully glazed café further enhance the experience of visiting the site. The understated but highly distinctive zinc-clad new exhibition building is a remarkable addition. Its unnerving, abstract entrance signals the uncomfortable history that is told inside. What could have been a largely black-box experience internally has been elevated by the precise coordination of daylighting, which is used to great effect. 

The project wonderfully mixes both beautifully reinvented existing buildings with varying degrees of modernism and restrained, sophisticated, cleverly planned and designed new-build. It offers a stylish, uplifting experience with powerful interpretation spaces to tell its internationally important story.

View all of our South West winners here, and all our RIBA UK Award winners here.

View the full RIBA UK Awards 2025 process.

RIBA Regional Awards 2025 sponsored by Autodesk, EH Smith, Equitone and Velux