A NEW visitor centre on Hadrian’s Wall is enjoying access to a high speed internet connection.

The location of the Sill National Landscape Discovery Centre, on a World Heritage Site at Once Brewed, near Bardon Mill, provided a challenge for IT specialists to incorporate new technology.

But after being awarded the contract to supply internet services at The Sill, Gateshead-based Aspire Technology Solutions managed to get the £14.8m centre connected before its grand opening on July 29.

The state-of-the-art attraction is set to bring 100,000 visitors to the district each year, and is expected to create up to 120 jobs.

It will also conduct educational workshops for schoolchildren and other groups, provide youth hostel accommodation and be used as a hub for local businesses.

The work included the installation of two connections to provide a high-speed internet service to the various areas of the new building and connectivity for its telephone system.

Sill manager Dr Sarah Glynn said: “Installing an enterprise-grade internet connection in such a rural location as The Sill is a challenge, and you also have to take into account the historic sensitivity of working within the Hadrian’s Wall corridor, which is a World Heritage site.

“Aspire considered and addressed all these factors and worked patiently with our partners to provide the high performance connection we need for visitors to The Sill.”

Keith Watson, account manager at Aspire, said: “We knew we were up against some very tight timescales to deliver the ultra-fast connectivity required and also that we were working in a rural location.

“We had to be sympathetic to the ancient monuments in the area when routing the connections and upgrading existing capacity at the exchange to deliver the connectivity.”

Aspire worked closely with BT Openreach, Virgin, and building contractor Sir Robert McAlpine to ensure everything was up and running in time for The Sill’s opening.