Kiplin Hall is an independent historic house and gardens located in the heart of rural North Yorkshire, established as a visitor attraction in 1971. Following Covid and changes to their marketing approach and ticketing, they grew visitor numbers and the tearoom and shop was soon overwhelmed resulting in the team deciding to build a new visitor centre. Refurbishment on a recently vacated stable block began in 2024 and opened in 2025.
In the last few years, we’ve been successful in growing our visitor numbers from 19,000 per annum to 34,000. Our tearoom and shop were already underperforming at our lower numbers and were overwhelmed at the higher ones. They were both crammed into a small room in the hall along with admissions, 44 covers for food and three sideboards for shop. We saw visitors walk away during busy periods as we were full up, and despite the visitor growth the shop remained at the same income level.
We decided to build a new visitor centre. Refurbishment on a recently vacated stable block began in 2024 and we opened in 2025. The tearoom was rebranded as a café and occupies the majority of the stable wing. Covers were increased to 70 indoor plus another 40 in the courtyard which is a real sun trap. The same staff and broadly the same menu were retained, but we moved from waited table service to counter service, reducing the high demand on staff time. We added new offers like bacon sandwiches and retained lots of high quality locally supplied cakes, ice cream and coffee as well as our freshly made soups and scones.
The shop was moved into the old garage for the coaches. It still shares a space with admissions meaning one volunteer can manage admission and shop sales. Display space is roughly four times what we had previously and uses professionally designed shelving and lighting to display the products to best effect. We continue to focus on hyper local arts and crafts as well as all the standard museum fare. Crucially, we rerouted the visitor route, making it exit through the gift shop.
The change in location was dramatic; café income doubled to £300,000 and shop income quadrupled to £40,000. Obviously only a portion of this is profit, and setting up costs reduced these in the first year, but we have definitely put ourselves in a much better financial position. We have also begun to develop the café especially as a destination in its own right, attracting cycling groups and coast to coast walkers who never used to come when the café was inside the pay barrier.
The total cost of the project was around £1.8million, though we raised around £800,000 from a bequest and some external fundraising. The remainder came from our endowment fund which represents a risk for the organisation as the dividends from it are part of our funding mix, but the income from the revised offer has definitely offset the risk. The project wasn’t entirely about raising commercial revenue, though that was a large part of it. We also rerouted the visitor journey to ensure people couldn’t come onto site without going past the ticket barrier, and the building we refurbished allowed us to move our staff offices and reserve collections out of our main hall freeing up space to be developed as more visitor offer soon.
We definitely learned some lessons along the way. We put in a takeaway window which we thought would be very popular but ended up not being needed much. We also put in a coffee machine (never had one before) with 150 cups per day throughput but definitely wish we had gone for a bigger size. We had been concerned the change in ambiance (from faux Jacobean wood panelling to a much more modern and airy feel) would cause issues, but while a few regulars lamented the change in atmosphere, our strong comms and the retention of our service and menu definitely helped. The shop has some lovely bay windows for display of product to the outside, but we didn’t account for how the hot sun would affect the candles and wax melts we decided to display there!
There is a lot more we could touch on, but I think as ever, having the right offer in the right place and with the right size and space for the visitors paid considerable dividends for us both in terms of improved visitor experience but also financially.
James Etherington, Director, Kiplin Hall and Gardens
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