Built in the early 19th Century as a private residence, it later became a boys prep school educating several famous people including Alec Douglas-Home and writer Osbert Sitwell.
When we first visited, the façade had lost a majority of the original material although in places it was evident that most subsequent render and repairs had been completed in a strong cement mix unsympathetic to the restoration need of the surrounding material and building.
We established that all the feature stucco was originally detailed with Roman cement, and as such all subsequent restoration should be carried out using an hydraulic lime mortar.
Once all the original defective stucco had been removed by hand we went about re-rendering all the flat areas and re-running the stucco mouldings, sting courses and cornicing. As a lot of the original details had been lost a certain amount of detective work was necessary to try to find the original mouldings beneath the subsequent layers, careful removal was paramount. We then made up profiles from zinc and ran new mouldings using the traditional method of a plasterer’s horse.
We have also been responsible for repointing the brickwork to the extension and supplying and fixing of new reconstructed stone copings and cills.
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