Mid Pennine Arts | Panopticons - Singing Ringing Tree

Panopticons - Singing Ringing Tree

Plan Your Visit

Plan your visit

From the M65 J9 take the turning off the roundabout signposted to Burnley - At the next roundabout take the first exit and stay in the right-hand lane - At the traffic lights turn right (NB It looks more like a fork in the road than a right-hand turn) - At the next roundabout take the exit signposted A682 Rawtenstall - the turning for Crown Point is on the left directly opposite The Aoska Restaurant, the last building on your right as you leave Burnley- The Singing Rigning Tree is signposted with a brown tourist sign marked 'Tree Panopticon'. Follow the road until you come to the car park where a gravel path leads you to the Panopticon.

Project location
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Panopticon - The Singing Ringing Tree high on the moors overlooking Burnley.

The Singing Ringing Tree is aptly named. A 3-meter-tall, wind-powered musical sculpture made of galvanized steel pipes, it stands high above the English town of Burnley. The pipes swirl to form the shape of a tree bent and blown by the wind, and produce an eerie, melodious hum as the constant wind on Crown Point drifts through them. The Singing Ringing Tree's pipes are used for both aesthetic qualities as well as for tuning, with their sound varied according to length and added narrow slits on the underside of specific pipes. The sound produced by these twisted metal trees covers several octaves and is said to be simultaneously discordant and melancholy, and intensely beautiful.

Completed in 2006, the Tree was designed by award-winning architects Mike Tonkin and Anna Liu. The site at Burnley was once that of a re-diffusion transmission station, complete with a run-down brick building and unused telegraph lines. The station was dismantled and the lines cut down to be recycled, to make way for the Tree that was to stand out against the stark, rolling landscape of the Pennines.

In 2007, the sculpture won the National Award of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) for architectural excellence.