TOWNELEY HALL, BURNLEY

May 2008

The Heritage Lottery Fund has awarded the Council £107,000 to complete work on preparing the restoration plan and has allocated a grant of £2 million towards the £2.8 million costs of restoring the Park over a period of five years between 2005 and 2010.

Lottery funding will be used to restore and improve Towneley Park’s historic landscape and improve facilities for visitors and will include:

 

-Restoring the ornamental gardens around the Hall
-Improving footpaths and re-surfacing car parks
-Restoring structures such as bridges, shelters and walls
-Improving toilet facilities
-Better signage and information
-Improvements to the Stables Cafe
-Improving playgrounds, seating, etc

Listed Garden Wall, Presavation

In April 2008 we were contracted to do presavation work to one part of the Garden Walls, on the grounds of Towneley Hall. This section of wall was part of a hot house for growing plants etc for the halls grounds, on the other side to this wall a 250mm cavity was built into the wall. Fires were then lit on the pictured side to provide heat. The wall is constructed from hand made bricks bedded on lime mortar, with a stone flag capping stone. The wall has not been maintained very well and is in a poor condition, the wall has moved slightly and has a 50mm crack around the centre. The works include removing the top 10 course of brick and rebuild with lime mortar, removing all plant life and growth.

This project is currently in progress and will be uploaded shortly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Sawley Abbey, Nr Clitheroe

 

De-weeding & Consoildation Works

September 2008

Works for English Heritage

 

Situated on the banks of the River Ribble, this ruinous Cistercian Abbey is almost overshadowed by the backdrop of dramatic hills and Lancashire's industrial buildings. Founded in 1147, Sawley Abbey - or Salley, as it was known in the Middle Ages - was neither large nor wealthy, but several of the monks serving there were very distinguished scholars.

Sadly, much of the remains today are little more than foundations, with only some of the abbey church walls standing to any height above ground. From excavations, however, it has been possible to determine the original plan of Sawley Abbey, albeit with some anomalies. The abbey church, for instance, appears very short and aisleless but, on further investigation, it would seem that this was as a result of some remodelling towards the end of its monastic life. Originally the west range would have served as the lay brothers' quarters but, again, at some point this was altered to provide a new abbots' lodging. There is a curious, squarish building at one end of this range which was probably built after the Dissolution.

Despite the lack of substantial buildings at Sawley Abbey, there were a few 'unexpected' areas of interest upon closer inspection of the site. In a corner of the south transept of the church, part of the monk's night stairs to their dormitory have survived. Several patches of medieval mosaic tiling still exist throughout the church, and many of the carved corbels and other decorative stonework have been rescued from excavations and put on view.

Sawley Abbey was suppressed in 1536, but the final days of monasticism here were as harshly dealt with as the buildings themselves. Following the Dissolution, monks returned to Sawley Abbey under a new abbot. However, when Henry VIII heard of this, he immediately ordered the monks to be executed for treason, as was common practice during the Pilgrimage of Grace. Therefore, in March 1537 the abbey was again dissolved, and its later history remains uncertain.

 

De-weeding works on rear elevation wall of chapel, docks and other deep rooted vegetation were spot treated with a mild weedkiller. Moss and other shallow rooted vegetation was just removed by hand. Loose stones had to be re-bedded using a NHL 3.5 lime mortar, mixed with locally sorced sharp sand. Large cracks and hollow joints had to be re-pointed with the same lime mortar mix

 

 

 

Valley View Farm, Ramsbottom Bury, Manchester August 2008 Valley view farm is located on the hill top over Ramsbottom, in a very exposed area. On this restoration project we had to repoint & blast rear elevation (below), and just repoint gable elevation. The property like most had been pointed with a hard cement based mortar, this was done around 20 years ago. On top of that there had been painted about 10 layers of external masonary paint. The picture (below) shows the cement mortar being removed from the stonework joints. The wall had suffered badly from the cement based mortar, and bad past building works. This had left large voids in the centre of the wall, with this the rear wall had (bowed) out in various locations. The original lime mortar has not decayed to badly, this is due to it being in a damp enviroment. Picture (above) shows elevation after it had been blasted, and partley pointed with a NHL 3.5 lime mortar.

Casting Ceiling Roses Workshop June 2008 On the project at Tunley Hall, we had to make 6 ceiling roses and install. We cast these out of latex molds, using a casting plaster & hessian. The picture (above) shows the casting plaster being painted into the latex mold, the hessian re-enforcement has been placed in the roses to stop cracking. This is then covered with a layer of casting plaster. Once the casting plaster has had sufficent time to set it is turned out of the mold, and then allowed to dry out. Picture (above) show ceiling roses ready to install to property.