Winter Gardens, Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens

Sunderland's museum, founded in 1846, is described as the first publicly owned cultural institution in the United Kingdom outside London. Its building on Burdon Road, now listed Grade II, came with a winter garden from the start: the foundation stone of the building was laid in 1877 by Alderman Samuel Storey, with Ulysses Grant looking on, and the whole complex opened in 1879. Wikipedia records that the glasshouse was modelled on the Crystal Palace.

During the Second World War a parachute mine damaged it in 1941, and the winter garden was demolished in 1942. Its revival came only at the end of the twentieth century, when the city held an open competition under the auspices of the RIBA; it was won in 1997 by the Newcastle practice Napper Architects, with backing from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Completed in 2001, the new glasshouse formed part of a £13.5 million Lottery-funded programme that also restored the museum and Mowbray Park.

A quarter of a century later a new £13.6 million project is under way: the museum and its winter garden closed at the end of August 2026, with reopening announced for late 2028.

Napper Architects conceived a large glazed dome, described by the museum as a contemporary glass rotunda, linked to the restored Victorian museum building. The structure cost £3.5 million. Under the glass the architects set streams, pools and a central water sculpture; the museum's website also shows a water sculpture by William Pye. The design relies on passive principles and natural elements to create several climatic settings, desert, tropical and temperate, within a single volume.

A walkway at canopy level crosses the glasshouse from above and gives views over Mowbray Park. The building received a Grand Award from the Association of Landscape Contractors of America in 2001, a Civic Trust Award commendation in 2002 and a commendation in the RIBA Hadrian Awards in 2003, whose judges called it a true contemporary scion of its grand Victorian predecessor; CABE also cited it as an exemplary cultural building. The current redevelopment plans to move the main entrance to the terrace facing the park.

The rotunda holds more than 2,000 tropical and exotic plants, arranged in the desert, tropical and temperate zones set out in the architects' design. The sources consulted give no species list or star specimen; they stress instead the overall effect of a tropical garden in the middle of the city, which the walkway lets visitors explore from the level of the canopy.

Water plays a large part: streams, pools and the central sculpture run through the planting, and koi carp live in the pools. The redevelopment launched in 2026 is meant to add a learning and engagement zone alongside the winter garden, focused on the museum's collections, the natural world, biodiversity and climate change, together with a new community facility called The Growing Space.

The winter garden lies at the back of the museum on Burdon Road, a few minutes' walk from Sunderland station, and opens directly onto Mowbray Park. The museum and glasshouse have been closed since the end of August 2026; during the works the museum runs activities across the city and offers hard-hat tours of the site. When it reopens, planned for late 2028, a new entrance will link the building directly with the park. An hour should then be enough for the winter garden and walkway, longer with the museum galleries and a stroll through Mowbray Park.