Egypt Exploration Society, Doughty Mews, Camden

Since its founding, 140 years ago, the Egypt Exploration Society has supported and promoted Egyptian cultural heritage – exploring more than 150 sites and monuments, publishing more than 350 volumes of scientific research, and engaging with thousands of people across the world. Now they are preparing the EES for its next milestone by taking advantage of the need to make their London premises more accessible for their members and the public, opening up their collections, staging events and exhibitions, and welcoming everyone and anyone with an interest in learning more about Egypt’s unique cultural heritage.

The Egypt Exploration Society is located on the eastern side of Doughty Mews in the heart of Bloomsbury.

The Site currently comprises three 2-storey adjoining mews houses and accommodates the EES over ground and part first floor, together with a self-contained flat which occupies the remainder of the first-floor level. The Society moved into this location in 1968 and since this time has provided grants to research projects around the world and communicated the results of this work to almost 2,000 international members through publications and events. The visitors. Therefore, the Society is embarking on an ambitious vision for its future as an inclusive hub for exploring Egyptian cultural heritage in central London.

The development refurbishes and extends the Site through an additional floor with a roof garden terrace, providing much needed outdoor amenity space for the EES staff, and the residential unit. Through the refurbishment of the buildings, it is sought to create ‘fit for use’ spaces for the functions of the EES, including office space, library, and bookstore and meeting room, with the residential unit more clearly and operationally separated. The proposals have adopted a fabric-first approach with Passivhaus u-values, that will dramatically reduce the in-use energy bills. These savings will be useful to the charity going into the future.

The Society is proud to be the custodian of the world’s largest collection of ancient papyri which are currently stored in Oxford along with a small collection of ancient cartonnage (coffin fragments). As part of the plans for refurbishment and extensions, it is sought to rehouse these in Doughty Mews providing a world-class facility for their storage and research. This hub and papyri-cartonnage store corresponds, roughly, to two floors of the current three properties, the remainder will house the other operational parts of the Society’s functions, together with the re-arranged residential unit. London headquarters includes a publicly accessible library of almost 20,000 volumes, one of the largest such collections in the UK, as well as a unique archive documenting the history of British archaeology in Egypt since 1882. This precious collection includes some of the only known records of sites now lost in Egypt and northern Sudan and constitutes an internationally important record of world heritage.