RESTORATION @ St Anne's
20/4 – 9/5/12
Before the plaster could go on the walls the electrical trunking and cabling had to be put in place, in some instances this was chased into the walls. The number of wires is extraordinary and apparently this is a simple scheme. Here is a picture of spaghetti junction in the undercroft, how you can make sense of that I don’t know!
The on-site electrician for James Electric, Marcel, is very shy and refuses to be photographed. I don’t know why!
The unhaired plaster coat is going on the walls now. Here it is in the process of being applied to the east elevation. It goes on quite quickly and can be worked for a long time after. You can achieve a good finish with the unhaired coat alone as it floats well.
The north elevation has been completed and is now awaiting the first finishing coat. It’s a long grind but Trevor, Michael, Peter, Liam and Lee are doing a great job.
16/4 – 20/4/12
Plastering has been the task at hand all this week. First the walls were cleaned down and spayed with a mist of water. Then what is called a scat coat of lime putty is applied, this is literally thrown onto the wall surface. Below is a picture of the scat coat high up on the west elevation.
This coat is damped down every now and again to ensure it dries evenly and slowly.
On top of this is applied a haired dub coat of lime mortar. This is the start of the plaster finish proper, the mortar is mixed with horse hair to give strength. The picture below shows the first haired coat on the north elevation.
Where the mortar comes up against mouldings it is carefully worked, at St. Anne’s we are plastering up to the mouldings so that they will be revealed. This is how the mouldings have been treated in the undercroft and in Parish Church next door. Here is Lee Johnston, mason for Pearce Construction, pointing in the south window.
10/4 – 13/4/12
The plastering work continued this week in the chapel room and in the outhouse which will house the loos. Other than that there is little new to report, although Trevor, one of the masons, did find another pair of putlogs very high up in the west elevations, I must admit that I groaned! It so happens that I could only photograph them because they were otherwise inaccessible.
Other works included the erection of a new scaffold up against the chimney stack on the north elevation. It was found during the removal of the plaster and render inside the building that much of the flashing was missing which was allowing water into the building. Here’s a picture that shows the new flashing in place.
31/3/12 – 5/4/12
With all the plaster and render removed from the walls more features presented themselves. In addition to more putlog holes we found more confusing features which we can only guess at the significance.
In the north elevation towards the west end we identified a distinct edge to the stone work which may indicate a blocked up opening. It is thought to run from the edge and carry on the left as you look at the picture. Any other edge associated with this could not be reliably identified.
In the opposite wall, in a roughly similar position, we found a large area of very loose rubble backfill. This was removed to reveal a distinct inner edge which still had plaster adhering to it. This confirmed that there was indeed a feature here and not just a decayed part of the wall. The feature could not be identified on the outside of the wall but that is not surprising as there has been significant cement repointing on the outside of the building that masks most features. It was difficult to confidently trace the extent of the entire feature. Below is a picture of the feature showing the plastered edge revealed once the rubble was removed.
It is some relief that on 3rd April the masons started to fill in some of the features and putlogs. They have all been recorded, none have been destroyed and all will be readily identifiable should they ever be exposed again. I say relief because it means I can get on with the task of planning for the buildings feature, the events and displays. The archaeology took a lot of my time but it was worth every minute. We are planning to keep some of the putlog holes open to give a tactile display element and to help tell the St. Anne’s story, I am thrilled about this.
Once the masons backfilled the voids they began the laborious task of plastering the whole of the chapel room. The first stage was to brush the walls and wet them down. Then they began to scat, literally throwing plaster on the walls, I bet it was harder than it looked! The supplier of the traditional building materials used by Pearce Construction has kindly offered to write an article on traditional lime plaster finishing. I hope this piece will be part of a forthcoming new feature on this website called ‘special features’.
Working for the Community
