Builders are making walls out of 500 straw bales

The Footprint education base, at St Catherine's, near Windermere, is the first building the National Trust has commissioned made of straw bale.

The �230,000 centre's foundation is being made of recycled tyres and walls of lime and straw and wool.

The centre due to open in October was given planning approval by the Lake District National Park Authority.

The centre for schoolchildren was designed to use natural light and have a low impact on the environment.

Constructing the walls for the project will involve using 500 bales which will have to be hardened and painted using modern building techniques.

Landfill sites

During building work the trust is running courses on the techniques used such as making foundations from tyres and concrete.

Tim Ashberry, trust property manager, said: "With this project, we wanted to show that we can be cutting edge and radical in our approach to buildings.

"We are very proud that we are not just making a traditional building of slate and timber.

"Unfortunately, we did have to accommodate 11 concrete pillars to take the load of the building, but we are also using 38 pillars made of car tyres and clay which would have ordinarily gone to a landfill site."

The building is being constructed by Amazon Nails Straw Bale Builders and was also funded by the Park Authority.