York-based designer and developer of visitor attractions and exhibitions, Continuum Group, is to design a museum for the site of the UK’s earliest cave art – Creswell Crags.

Last year, the Creswell Heritage Trust (CHT) appointed Continuum to help apply for the funds needed to develop a national Centre of Excellence on the site.

Last month, the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) granted the project a stage one pass and £195,000 to help produce more detailed designs for the attraction.

Continuum will now complete the masterplan for a museum and education centre mapping out the history behind the Ice Age engravings, believed to be around 12,000 years old.

Continuum hopes to secure the full £4.6m funding from HLF next spring, when it will make its final decision based on the masterplan.

Dominic Tweddle, chief executive of Continuum, said: “We will look for clear but clever ways to interpret the complex series of caves at Creswell, including the Ice Age cave art.”

Plans include the creation of three different zones inside the museum. The Discovery Zone will feature prehistoric cave techniques and is to offer an interactive explanation of life in the last Ice Age, while the Time Zone will allow visitors to see and experience the landscape as it changed over the millennia, looking out on the Crags through a virtual window.

The Knowledge Zone would explore the rich archaelogical collection from the site. Construction is anticipated to start in spring 2006 with work due for