H ISTORY has been revitalised to help safeguard the future vibrancy of the tiny community of Rochester.

The ruins of a mock Iron Age roundhouse have been turned into a mini-amphitheatre fit to host everything from stargazing to music workshops to dramatic productions.

“The potential for the site is only limited by people’s imaginations,” said local resident and member of the steering group, Red Kellie.

“It’s about opening the site up to a lot of other organisations now to use the space and do something different.”

The foundations for the project were the remains of the roundhouse built at the behest of landowner Lord Redesdale around the turn of the Millennium.

Part of a reconstruction of a Romano-British farm, it fell into disuse after just a few years.

The new team saved what they could of the stonework and then added a curved, timber building, completing that sense of a theatre in the round.

Work continued apace this week to make sure the site, behind the village’s Carmien Cafe, was ready for this weekend’s Redefest. The door and windows were only installed on Wednesday!

But thanks to the determination of the driving force, the Kielder Water & Forest Development Trust, and the many Rochester volunteers who have rolled their sleeves up, its walls will soon be reverberating with the sound of African drumming, voices participating in The Big Sing, ukuleles, Bluegrass riffs and the dulcet tones of a story-teller. Redefest as a whole is set to run through Friday evening and Saturday.

It will be the first of many such events to take place here, said art and architecture curator Peter Sharpe. This is the third such project he has co-ordinated on behalf of the Kielder development trust, the other two being a warm room at Kielder, where visitors can take refuge and plug themselves into the internet, and a ‘star shelter’ at Stonehaugh.

In all three cases, it has been mature MA students from Newcastle University’s school of architecture who have done the business side of things, from carrying out the consultations with local residents to working up the designs and taking them through the planning process.

Such has been the success of the projects that architecture students are now choosing to go to Newcastle University specifically because of the live work experience they will get on the course.

Peter said: “The university has injected £60,000 to £70,000 into the Rochester Roundhouse project alone, in the form of materials and student and teaching time. It’s an investment that pays dividends all round.”

While the students gain valuable experience, local residents gain a valuable community asset. “One thing that is terribly important is the longevity of the piece,” he said. “If it’s just parachuted in, it’s less likely to be used and looked after.”

Hence the consultations, held mostly in Rochester Village Hall, were detailed and elicited exactly what was wanted.

The answer, as it turned out, was a form of ‘inside space, outside’ that provided a degree of shelter against the vagaries of the Northumbrian weather.

“A lot of the ideas people have suggested during the projects came off the back of the Dark Skies Park status awarded to this area,” said Peter. “When that happened, communities became interested in capitalising on that by promoting stargazing opportunities.

“That might have been the starting point, but once the structure is there, in place, people will start thinking about how else they can use it.

“There is already a real breadth of interest from different user groups in Rochester.”

The schools in Otterburn, Bellingham and West Woodburn, and pubs and guest houses across the patch, are already looking at how they can use it.

Whatever the plans, though, Red stresses the roundhouse will be used in conjunction with the village hall across the road, and not instead of it.

“There have been lots of discussions and one of the joint ideas we had was to run a planetarium event in the village hall, after which we’d come over to the roundhouse for some stargazing.

“There’s no end to the ideas, really.”