Preston Tower, Doocot and Gardens wins a 2026 RIAS Award
Earlier in May, Preston Tower, Doocot and Gardens won a 2026 RIAS Award, and Natasha Huq received the RIAS/Equitone Project Architect Award for her work leading the project. RIAS named ten winners this year from a shortlist of fourteen.
Preston Tower is a scheduled monument in the centre of Prestonpans, standing with its doocot in a walled garden that is open to the town as a public park. It is owned by the National Trust for Scotland. GRAS worked for East Lothian Council, with the National Trust for Scotland, Prestonpans Community Council and the Friends of Preston Tower, alongside conservation specialists, archaeologists and local contractors on site.
The repairs were phased, set by the condition of the structure and by the limits of public funding, and ordered so the most urgent work came first and future maintenance was kept low. Fragile stonework was consolidated, eroded stone cut out and replaced in matching stone, and decayed corbels remade, so the fabric can weather and be repaired as it always has. New galvanised steelwork was added where the building needed it, chosen for a long life in the exposed coastal air. A new stair in metal and stone opens the upper levels for safe access while keeping the tower’s earlier and later phases legible. Garden paths were rebuilt to reconnect the site to the surrounding streets. The work stabilised the structure and opened it to visitors rather than leaving it closed and deteriorating.
Natasha Huq writes about the ethos behind repairing a scheduled monument, the emerging stewardship of this public space and resilience through conservation in her essay on Preston Tower for the RIAS Quarterly.
Our thanks to RIAS, and to everyone who safeguarded the monument’s future: East Lothian Council, the National Trust for Scotland, Prestonpans Community Council, the Friends of Preston Tower, the project team and site foreman Robert Swinton. Congratulations to Natasha Huq, GRAS lead on the project and an RIAS Conservation Accredited architect, who carried it through a complex and collaborative process.