Mold Town Hall, North Wales, 2011
Flintshire County Council

Recclesia completed specialist works at the Grade II listed Town Hall in Mold for Flintshire County Council in 2011.

The works comprised of decorative fibrous plaster conservation and repair to cornices, pargetting and decorative wall panels along with specialist repair work to the original patterned and coloured terazzo floor throughout the building.

The Henry Hope Glasshouse, Worcester 2011

The Clark & Hope Glasshouse in Worcester is a Grade II Listed cast iron and glass structure which formed part of the Victorian nursery in Hallow. The project involved the restoration and conversion of the building into a conservatory for private clients. There were various problems with the cast iron including poor previous repair work, structural movement due to corrosion and ingress of weather. Most of the original mouth-blown glass had been lost to time, but a few panes remained.

Work began with the removal of the glass and the repair, partial rebuilding and re-pointing of the brickwork, which originally housed ten cast iron ventillators. Only one of these remained, but was in extremely poor condition. Following its careful removal, it was copied and ten new ventillators were cast.

The cast iron structure was stripped back using ground glass air abrasion, which removed the dozens of layers of old paint whilst leaving the ironwork unmarked beneath. Missing sections were cast and incorporated into the main structure, principally to roof members. The opening sections of the roof were overhauled and returned to good working order.

The walls were rendered using an hydraulic lime mortar mix, and new oak cills and skirtings were added, along with M&E installations. Following redecoration of the frame the entire building was reglazed using clear mouth-blown cylinder glass which looks simply stunning in any light.

Titanic Survivor's House at Port Sunlight 2011

Port Sunlight on the Wirral Peninsula is the charming planned village created by the Lever Brothers in 1888 for the workers in their giant soap factory. The village was named after their best selling soap brand, Sunlight and Lever personally helped to plan the village with the help of thirty different architects. Between 1899 and 1914, 800 houses with a population of 3,500 were built, together with allotments and public buildings including the Lady Lever Art Gallery, a cottage hospital, schools, a concert hall, open air swimming pool, church, and a temperance hotel.

One of the village residents in 1912 was one Elisabeth Leather. The Encyclopedia Titanica states that Mrs Elizabeth Leather, 41, was born in Liverpool. When she signed on to the Titanic on 6 April 1912 she gave her address as 28 Park Road, Port Sunlight, Liverpool. Her last ship had been the Olympic and as a stewardess she received monthly wages of £3 10s. At the time of the collision she was asleep in her berth and was not awakened by the impact, instead she awoke some three quarters of an hour later. She found as she made her way to see to her passengers that they had already abandoned their quarters, so she proceeded on up to B deck. She was rescued in lifeboat sixteen.

The house in which she lived still stands today, but following a survey revealing significant problems with the oak timber-framing, lime rendered infill panels, brickwork repointing and leaded light windows, Recclesia was awarded the contract to carry out the restoration work and the specialist redecoration of this historically fascinating example of planned village architecture. The work was carried out using traditional materials and all of the time-honoured techniques used would have been recognisable to the craftsmen who had originally built the house in the early 1900s.

Today, the village is a major tourist attraction looked after by the Port Sunlight Village Trust, for whom Recclesia has carried out a number of contracts over the last few years. The extraordinary story behind the building is one of the reasons why so many people visit the village.

St Winnefride's Schoolhouse, Llanasa, North Wales 2011

Recclesia completed the refenestration of the entire building including the conservation and repair of traditional cast iron casements, window masonry and replacement of glass.

All sixteen windows were reglazed using very fine mouth-blown cylinder glass carefully cut and selected to provide plenty of movement and distortion.

Hulme Hall, Port Sunlight, 2010

Hulme Hall is one of the largest building at Port Sunlight, the planned village built by the Lever Brothers for their employees at the soap factory on the Wirral peninsular. The building is best remembered for being the first place that Ringo Star ever played a gig with the Beatles, and continues to be used today for Weddings, Conferences and Exhibitions.

Recclesia completed two phases of work at Hulme Hall in 2010 including restoration of metal casements and a combination of new and restored leaded lights and repair and re-pointing to the masonry.

St Georges Terrace, Bolton, 2009
Client: Corporate Developments Ltd

In 2009, Recclesia were commissioned to undertake specialist works to a row of nineteen terraced Georgian Townhouses in Bolton. In their original form, all nineteen properties had decorative arched fanlights above every entrance way, but only two original fanlights remained. The brief was to achieve a more uniform appearance by restoring the two original fanlights and using this process to make seventeen reproduction units to run through the rest of the houses.

The originals were removed from site and returned to Recclesia's workshops where conservation specialists from the Stained Glass studio began the process of stripping back the units in order to conserve each individual element whilst the timber frames into which they sat underwent repair. The restoration process also allowed a detailed investigation into the method in which the originals had been built, meaning that we could establish a methodology for reproducing the new units to match exactly.

The rest of the project involved the installation of new masonry stepped entrances with railings and a general overhall of the facades of the whole street, involving several other contractors.

The Vulcan, Llanidloes, 2008

This listed timber frame building was formally the Vulcan Arms & Smithy. The timber frame was failing from the cellar side which was built in the 1700s to allow cold spring waters to run through it as a way of keeping the ale cool!

Years on, the running water had taken its toll on both the cellar and the frame. The water was filling the cellar up and keeping the frame so wet that it could never dry out. Further, to allow for the cellar the frame had been suspended on gigantic oak timbers some eighteen inches square. We were charged with the task of inserting new timbers under the existing frame, which meant a huge operation to needle through the foundations, prop the existing frame and slide in an oak suport weighing several tonnes. There was no stopping the spring water from pouring through the bedrock beneath the frame, so the decision was made to handle the water better by inserting better drainage into the cobbled floor, allowing the water to flow away, and installing automatic powered vents to keep the humidity down.

Joseph Paxtons Fernery at Tatton Park, Cheshire, 2009
Architect: Purcell Miller Tritton
For: The National Trust & Cheshire West CC

In 1850 William Tatton Egerton employed Joseph Paxton, the creator of Crystal Palace, to design a Fernery and an Italian Garden for Tatton Park. The Fernery is now known for being part of one of the most important collections of glasshouses in the UK and is home to a vast variety of ferns and tropical plants.

With this in mind, Recclesia were asked to carry out extensive glazing restoration to the structure whilst the park remained open and the delicate flora remained in place. There were broken panes of glass all over the glasshouse meaning that we required access to all areas. We partnered up with Nationwide Access who surveyed the site and provided us with a variety of different machines to reach the difficult angles without danger of smashing further glass.

The restoration work was done using only mouth-blown cylinder glass to match the original glass and we used some 250 square feet in the process. The entire glasshouse was cleaned on completion.

The Shooting Box, Tatton Park, 2009
Architect: Purcell Miller Tritton
For: The National Trust & Chester West CC

A quirky building set in the heart of the park, the shooting box was originally used as a hide for shooting game. The box was converted into public lavatories but was suffering persistant vandalism. Recclesia sensitively installed secure glazing behind griles to address the problem.