Ickworth House Suffolk, UK

Ickworth House in Suffolk is a neoclassical structure topped by a striking 30m high rotunda. It was completed in the early 19th Century and is now owned by the National Trust. As well as housing an extensive art collection, the building contains apartments and a hotel in the east wing and a conference and event centre in the recently renovated west wing.

The highly responsive Delmatic lighting management system at Ickworth House incorporates a range of energy-saving features, as well as integration with the audiovisual system.

The lighting management system has been specially designed to provide precise control of both fluorescent and tungsten lighting – the latter being used to reflect the original lighting designs. It therefore comprises a combination of DALI bus-wire modules to provide dimming and monitoring of the fluorescent lighting, and switching and dimming modules to control the tungsten light sources.

As the spaces within the building experience considerable variation in occupancy, the lighting control strategy includes occupancy detection so that lighting can be dimmed or switched off when spaces are unoccupied. These controls can be overridden with manual switches if required. This configuration also makes it easy to change the lighting configuration in the future via the Delmatic system should the usage of any spaces change.

In public areas where presentations are made, the lighting system has also been interfaced to the audiovisual system, so that the lighting is dimmed when presentations are in progress. The interfaces ensure this happens automatically when presentations start and, again, can be overridden manually by the user.

Nigel Houghton, National Trust Building Surveyor, commented “As part of the Ickworth Lives scheme, we are very much trying to create the atmosphere of the early 1900’s, and a key part to this is creating lighting levels of this period.  Having the lighting at such low levels is not practical on a day to day basis, so the Delmatic lighting management system is being used so we can switch the lights between very low historic levels, general opening/exhibition levels and cleaning levels.”