the finished artical

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

A Gate House by the side of a moat.

A one room building 4 metres x 4 metres built of Blue Lias limestone.

It was in a sorry state with the roof gone and the crenellated parapet in a precarious state. The Cotswold cornice stones and crenulations ready to fall off.

The task was to conserve the building with minimum replacement or disturbance. The main area of concern was the wall surface. Built of cut blocks of rubble faced blue lias lime stone – regularly coursed. Blue lias is a poor building stone and these stones were dire. Normally the building would have been lime rendered this, however, was not allowed. Yet the stones couldn’t be left exposed . There were fist sized holes all over – especially were the ivy had been growing.

We cleaned vigorously, removing all loose material. Every hole was filled with mortar and stone pinnings(off cuts of stone that are used to replace some of the mortar used to fill the holes )Each stone was treated individually so that the edges were maintained. The pointing had been raked out so that each stone was clearly visible.

We lime roughcast rendered the walls. We had included as much animal hair in the mix as possible and coloured the render with black and yellow pigments to get a close colour match with the stone.

Whilst the render was still very wet we carefully brushed it around , working it into the cracks and into the mortar joints, brushing and compacting, brushing off the excess, until the whole surface was encased in a thin reinforced lime render exoskeleton

The render followed every undulation and contour like a tight fitting dress. Afterwards we painted on four coats of blue lias lime coloured lime wash.The result was remarkable. Each stone individually expressed, their surfaces restored to their original rubble faced appearance.

All thoroughly protected.

Building Conserved .

Architecture restored.