Hare & Humphreys: Conservators To The Queen – And Combermere Abbey

July 14, 2014Crafts and Tradesabbey

The restoration of the ceiling in The Library at Combermere Abbey was undertaken by Hare & Humphreys, a Royal Warrant-holding company based in London. Founded in 1987, the firm has a hugely distinguished list of clients. Peter Hare, was born in Scotland, but when he was young his newly-widowed mother moved to rural Norfolk, which is where he was raised. In contrast, Paul Humphreys was brought up in suburban east London. Peter’s early interest was interior decoration, while Paul worked for a company which specialised in cleaning and restoring historic churches.

They first met in 1978 when they were recruited to work on the re-instatement of The William Morris room at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Inspired by Morris’s Arts and Crafts movement, they realised that they both had “the most extraordinary desire and drive to revive the seemingly lost respect for decorators, conservators and artists alike, by creating a modern 20th century company with the spirit, ideals and commitment shown a century earlier”.

Peter Hare formed his first company in 1981 and Paul worked alongside him on many commissions. This work took them to many corners of the world, and their clients were interior designers, billionaires (mega-yachts were part of their portfolio), kings, sultans, and rock stars. In the UK they undertook conservation in the National Gallery, the Palace of Westminster, and both Houses of Parliament.

The new company of Hare & Humphreys was created around the restoration and re-decorating of the Spencer family’s original London home, Spencer House in Saint James’s – built between 1756 and 1766, and one of the most extravagant aristocratic town houses in London. It was commissioned by the first Earl Spencer – a direct ancestor of the late Diana, Princess of Wales.

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A detail of a ceiling at Spencer House, conserved by Hare & Humphreys

Five years later they were called to Windsor in the wake of the catastrophic fire at Windsor Castle. Their first task was to assess the extent of the damage and create a plan for the re-building and restoration. The firm’s work on – in particular – the Crimson Drawing room, the Green Dining room, St George’s Hall, and the State Dining Room was acknowledged as being world-class, and resulted in Her Majesty the Queen awarded the company her Royal Warrant.

Hare & Humphreys’ Royal Warrant for their work on Windsor Castle

Since then the firm has worked on many of the most important and prestigious conservation projects imaginable, including Saint Paul’s Cathedral, Hampton Court Palace, Dover Castle, the Royal Academy’s base at Burlington House in Piccadilly, the Monument to The Great Fire of London, and The Howard Theatre at Downing College in Cambridge University. Their work covers every style and age of building, be it private, academic, public, or ecclesiastical. The firm’s range of work runs from consultancy and design, right through to undertaking every aspect of conservation, no matter the number of disciplines involved. As well as the structure of a building and any form of decorative surface, Hare & Humphreys will restore furniture and internal fittings.

Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London

As Hare and Humphreys say, “We believe that the care of historic interiors is a specialised discipline, requiring detailed knowledge of all the elements of the interior, as well as the materials and the techniques involved in making and restoring them. The scheme to be conserved could comprise many different materials, such as paint, timber, stone, plaster, gilding, and upholstery. It also involves a multitude of specialist trades including decorating, fine art, french polishing, joinery, fibrous plastering, and many others”.

In 2012 the firm completed one of their most exciting and original commissions. A new Royal barge – the first built for 250 years – was built for Queen Elizabeth II’s sixtieth jubilee celebrations, and Hare & Humphreys was asked to paint and gild the vessel.

Gloriana was to be at the very centre of the flotilla of the Thames Pageant, carrying the Royal Family. Detailed consultation with the Royal Household and the College of Arms was needed to ensure that protocol was not breached in any particular. The decoration was designed to reflect the tradition of historic Royal barges, whilst also incorporating references to the Queen’s six decades as monarch. Tributes were added in recognition of the long marriage to, and great support from His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh. These took the form of the emblems of the Lord High Admiral which can be seen painted either side of the rear cabin entrance.

The external gilding on Gloriana used fifteen hundred books of 23.5 carat gold leaf. A trompe l’oeil panelled ceiling of the Royal cabin was inspired by the birds which can be seen on the Thames, from the river’s source to the estuary – the crests of all the Thames-side boroughs were represented within this scheme. The design also included images showing other royal barges from centuries gone by, and as if it wasn’t enough to have painted the barge itself, Hare & Humphreys’ craftsmen hand–painted the boat’s eighteen oars and the large rear rudder with depictions of legendary sea serpents.

So far as the work needed on The Library at Combermere Abbey was concerned, Helen Hughes, the specialist conservator who had conducted a detailed survey of The Library, suggested three firms to the Abbey’s owner, Sarah Callander Beckett. They were invited to visit the Abbey and tender for the work accordingly. Two of those companies submitted similar prices, but Sarah was very impressed by Hare & Humphreys’ approach and in particular by the firm’s staff.

The head of their team was Cathy Littlejohn, H&H’s Conservation & Projects Director, and Sarah says that she was not only impressed by her obvious knowledge, but also by her enthusiasm to undertake the conservation work at the Abbey. As Sarah says, “Quite apart from the team’s abilities, I was going to be having all these people more or less living in my family house for a few months, so it was a great help that I liked them”.

Cathy’s first visit was in September 2013, and it was agreed that work should begin in early March 2014. The conservators who were on site full time were to be accommodated during the working week in some of the Abbey’s self-catering holiday cottages.

Cathy Littlejohn says that right from the beginning she realised that it would be a very interesting project. “I could see the quality of the ceiling immediately on my first visit – and its faded glory. I went up into the roof space above the ceiling and was amazed by the history encapsulated in just that relatively small area. I also remember it being cold and overcast, and, to be honest, the room was rather forbidding. You do find though that once you get underway on a job you warm to any room, as it reveals its secrets to you.

“I was very confident that we could do The Library justice, and I also knew that it would be a very satisfying job to undertake. No job is ever routine for us. There are always things which we don’t expect. We were removing years of dirt, just caused by the passing of time, and it was a wonderful transformation. I find that you look back at the first photographs you took, after a few weeks, and have forgotten just what a difference you have made.

“At the Abbey we encountered no major problems, just difficulties which had to be addressed along the way. One of our biggest problems had nothing to do with the ceiling at all; we had a bad batch of paint stripper sent to us, which was too runny to use. That aside, we had to address the black mould we found, and some of the surfaces weren’t what he had expected. The small triangular panels of painted decoration turned out to be on either canvas or paper, and they needed treating differently. We had expected to clean the dais but up close we saw that the darkening wasn’t actually dirt but an antiquing effect which had been applied!

Two of the triangular motifs; on the bench being cleaned and restored, and re-instated

“Within The Library we were faced with many different surfaces – the painted crests, the wooden shields, paper and canvas as well as plaster – and they all needed different approaches so far as their conservation was concerned.

“Each of the decorated panels was unique. There was no standardisation, so we couldn’t use a template, and each one had to be treated individually. Like so many old buildings The Library is incredibly idiosyncratic. For example, the rising and falling profile of the cornice is wonderful. You could only really see that fully when you got up on scaffolding and looked along it.”

One of the heraldic shields before and after conservation

Something which the Abbey staff realised and appreciated about Hare & Humphreys’ team was the knowledge and experience at all levels. The firm puts their operating teams together very carefully, making sure that within each team they have the expertise in total to tackle any eventuality. Some of the firm’s staff have specialist university training, but others come up through the trade and then move into heritage restoration and gain experience on the job. Cathy says, “We are very positive about both routes, and working on castles, palaces and many of the greatest and most historic buildings in the country means they have enormous practical experience. The crafts people learn from the graduates and vice versa.”

It’s also true to say that the team really enjoyed working at Combermere. Their enthusiasm for the job, and the pleasure they derived from it, were manifest – but they also enjoyed staying in the Abbey cottages – and dining nightly up the lane at The Combermere Arms.

The conservation work was undoubtedly timely; as Cathy says, “The flaking of the paint would have continued, and in fact probably accelerated, so that if the job had been postponed for, say, five years there would have been far less to work with. Also the plasterwork was decaying worryingly. We had to pin back quite a lot of plaster on both the panelling and the beams. Some of the smaller motifs on the cornicing had fallen away, and that would have continued – and further loos of those would have been a real shame. Thinking ahead by five years again, you would certainly have seen a real deterioration. It’s a very good thing that the problems were addressed when they were.”

The coving on the north wall of The Library, with painted shields, before and after conservation by Hare & Humphreys

The Abbey As It Was In Tudor Times

June 23, 2014North Wingabbey

Kathryn Callander has just finished her fourth year studying Architecture at Tulane University in New Orleans. Her family is from San Francisco and she is a cousin of the owner of Combermere Abbey, Sarah Callander Beckett. On a recent stay at the Abbey Kathryn surveyed the timber structure of the Abbey from the inside of the building, taking a large number of measurements and feeding those dimensions into a CAD programme. With that data in place she was able to create an image of exactly how the Abbey looked when it was re-built as a private house by Richard Cotton in the 1560s, while Queen Elizabeth I sat on the throne of England.

Combermere Abbey had been a Cistercian house since 1133, and in 1539 it was seized by Thomas Cromwell’s agents under authority granted by Henry VIII. The last Abbot, John Massey, surrendered the building and all its lands, and in 1542 the entirety was granted to Richard’s father, Sir George Cotton, who was comptroller of the household of King Henry’s illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond and Somerset.

Sir George and his brother Sir Richard Cotton were the sons of John Cotton and Cecily Mainwaring, who lived at Alkington – south of Whitchurch in northern Shropshire, and only a few miles from the Abbey. The two brothers came from a modest background in a part of the kingdom far from London and the court, but became hugely successful courtiers. Both men were knighted by Henry, and both were granted great estates (Sir Richard’s was in Hampshire).

It may be that Sir George lobbied to gain Combermere Abbey and its lands out of affection for the area where he was brought up. Certainly he would have known the Abbey and its lands well. He might have enjoyed the ‘Local boy makes good’ element. During his lifetime (he died young, in 1545, aged 40) he would certainly have collected the income from the estate, but his early death left the creation of a new house to his son – though demolition and the sale of materials not required for re-use may well have started earlier.

The west front of the Tudor house.

The Abbey church, its cloisters and almost all the ancillary buildings were demolished, and all evidence of their original positions was erased. The building materials were doubtless used elsewhere – probably sold off – and only a small amount was needed for the re-building – mostly timber and sandstone. Almost all that was kept of the Abbey’s structure was the high status central section around The Abbot’s Lodgings, which was in the style of a manorial great hall, with the main room on the first floor, and a relatively newly-built chimney on the east wall.

The stone-built ground floor seems to have been kept intact, and new wings were added to the north and the south. The building was symmetrical, with five identical gables (save for a quattrefoil in the centre) but the roof line dips sharply to the north (see below). The chimneys are assymetrical. The lantern in the centre of the roof was a Tudor addition, used by spectators to watch hunting of all and any kind on the land surrounding the Abbey. The gabled wings to the north and south projected forward to create a C-shaped plan.

Kathryn’s survey accords exactly with the 1730 drawing of the Abbey. This is very useful; having established that the depiction of the Abbey itself is valid we can put our faith in the other buildings and both the gardens and landscape.

The west front of Combermere Abbey, drawn almost 200 years after the re-building.

It is possible that the further wing and other buildings to the south of the Abbey’s core were also built in Tudor times, given their architectural style, though possibly shortly after the main was block was completed. The much lower status range to the north west, separate from the house and probably not used as accommodation, was demolished at some point. Where this building stood is now part of the lake (the two meres were joined later to create a single 150-acre lake).

The north face of the Abbey and the return of that face.

These elevations show that at the northern end there were two gables and a valley in the roof. Again the stone ground floor has been retained from the pre-Dissolution structure (though possibly re-worked to some degree), but the projecting wings are entirely timber-framed.

We are very grateful to Kathryn for her work, and wish her well for the future.

The Heraldry of Combermere Abbey

June 18, 2014The Libraryabbey

In 2006, Peter A. Marshall from Lancaster researched and documented the heraldry of Combermere. His full article can now be downloaded as a PDF.

It largely focuses on the display of family heraldry in the Combermere Abbey Library, which he believes is one of the most extensive to be found in a country house. However it also explores the crests and shields to be found upon memorials in local churches.

Click link to download Combermere Abbey Heraldry

The Roof Is Off; All Is Revealed

May 14, 2014North Wingabbey

Three weeks into the restoration of the North Wing of Combermere Abbey, the building is dry and secure under its massive superstructure of hundreds and hundreds of scaffolding poles and a coat of flame-proof plastic sheeting. The covering has cost a large amount of money but it is money well spent; it allows the work to continue regardless of the weather, and the scaffolding – all 70 tonnes of it – itself provides invaluable corridors round all three sides, and on four levels. It’s also a very safe way of working; if anything falls from the exterior, it falls within the sheeting, and the structure itself is so strong that wide, shallow aluminium steps are supported on the north side – so workmen aren’t going up and down potentially dangerous ladders. A further advantage is that although the builders are playing pop music on the radio – as they are required to do by ancient custom – it can’t be heard outside the plastic.

The scaffolding and plastic sheet covering seen from the north west, facing the lake, with stairway access on the north side.

From the north. The telescopic ‘cherry picker’ loads materials to and from each of two platforms which have been built into the scaffolding surround at each level.

From the east – with the remains of the wing built for the visit of The Duke of Wellington on the right – though whether the range of arches looked like that originally we do not know. They may have been windows in the ballroom.

With the roof now removed completely the building resembles a massive, three dimensional jigsaw puzzle – albeit one that has been created at different times across many centuries, and one which is rotten and crumbling. Many questions are being raised by what is been uncovered, and it will be some time before all the evidence can be assessed and will have answers. One query regards floor levels; identifying the original levels of the different floors takes some thinking about, and in one area a floor seems to have been raised several feet by the addition of a number of huge beams – possibly re-used from elsewhere – simply being stacked one upon the other.

What we do see throughout is an astonishingly high level of rot. Some of the very earliest timbers are solid, but the other timbers, no matter their size or their age, are crumbling away – and have obviously been doing so for very many years. It is very common to see vertical timbers which have rotted from the base and no longer reach the surfaces they once stood upon.

Only a dendrochronology survey will finally answer the questions about the age of the different timbers, but it seems logical that the larger, older timbers in the North Wing date from the middle of the Sixteenth century. After Abbot John Massey surrendered the Abbey to Thomas Cromwell’s agents in 1539 it was granted to Sir George Cotton, but the work of demolishing the ecclesiastical buildings and the building of a private house was undertaken by his son, Sir Richard Cotton. This was complete by the middle of the mid-1560s. The new house had five steep gables on the west-facing facade, and was symmetrical. There was two more gables to the south, of which at least one was of the same height, but they were set back slightly. The house was two storeys high, but small windows within the gables suggest that there were attic windows.

Throughout Cheshire and Shropshire the structure of timber-framed houses of this period have survived very well. In many cases the exposed timbers were crassly tarred or painted black, to give the ‘magpie’ effect which for a long time was thought to be original and authentic. We now know that such was not the case, and sealing the timbers was a bad idea; where they were left exposed they weathered to a very pleasing dark silver colour, and hardened naturally. In many cases timbers of this age and older seem to have almost petrified, and are exceptionally dense and strong.

It seems likely that encasing the house within the gothick outer shell stopped air from circulating, and allowed damp to take hold. The horizontal distance between the Sixteenth and Nineteenth structures varies considerably. Where the newer exterior projects forward that is a deception, and it is not a reflection of the earlier building. At these points the gap between the two can be as much as eighteen inches.

A relatively small number of large timbers was used in the 1814 – 1821 re-building. Laths were then built over this frame and ashlar was applied and scored to give an appearance of stone blocks (as already noted). These laths were both thin and flimsy, and a softwood seems to have been used. Where architectural changes were made, such as where window openings were altered, a mixture of wood and brick was used. This was not meant to ever be seen, and it is not hard to imagine that the builders were only too aware of the fact. The workmanship seems hurried at best and shoddy at worst. In some cases – such as in Tudor quatrefoils – the infilling is nothing more than mortar.

It is not hard to imagine that in the damp atmosphere of low-lying south Cheshire decay set in fairly soon. We have to remind ourselves that the ‘gothicisation’ is in fact less than two centuries old, and very many buildings of that age – built with better materials and more care – have survived very well.

There is also the likelihood of subsidence. The house is on a plateau, but from the west front the land falls away gently to the lake; at least, it does now – there was no water in front of the house in Tudor times. There were two lakes and the gap between the two was immediately to the west of the south. They were joined to create the current, 150-acre lake, in the Nineteenth century. The Tudor house incorporated the Abbot’s Lodgings – a late-medieval manorial hall in all but name – just off-centre, so the position of the Tudor house was dictated by the existing footprint of that room. The house has no cellars or foundations, and given the huge weight of the Tudor oak beams, and then the gothick overcoat, it might well have settled unevenly.

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One of the gothick pediments at the very top of the house, on the west front. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect this to be made of stone!

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What were designed to look like stone details were made up of layers of wood, built up to give horizontal depth. The disfigurement is from foliage clinging to the outer face.

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We have commented on these curious wooden triptychs before. There are two, facing each other within the returns on the west face. Again, one would expect windows frames such as these to be made of stone. On the exterior face (top of these two images) the frame has been boxed in. On the inside it has been reinforced with an iron strap at some point.

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The window has now been removed and is in storage awaiting either restoration or a new frame being made by way of an exact replica.

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With the roof removed from the North Wing we can look down on the top floor from the temporary corridor around the scaffolding. The large, steel I-section beams were inserted fairly recently as emergency measures, and to support the structure while the scaffolding put up fifteen years ago was removed.

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In many places we are seeing carpenters’ marks. Where components were first assembled on the ground, they were identified by the master carpenter’s individual marking system so that they fitted together as intended once they were hoisted into place. This was particularly important for joints.

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The mix of building materials used at the Abbey (which Dr Johnson commented on, with approval) can be seen here.

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What remains of the wire-operated bell system to summon servants can be seen in a disused bedroom high up in the North Wing. The different rooms are annotated in an elegant hand-written script.

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A curious internal arrangement in what was a servant’s bedroom, with a fireplace on an internal wall next to an arched doorway. The external gothick window is almost at floor level. Headroom is good though (around eight feet).

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This pargetting work (above and below) on a fire surround in a North Wing bedroom is probably not as old as it would have us believe.

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These five photos show the delicate and elegant Georgian decoration which has survived the decay. These features will be conserved and included in the new decor. Missing plaster moulding will be replaced with new mouldings modelled from areas of the original work. The gothick arches will of course be conserved, and the external windows – so typical of the Abbey – will be restored or duplicated.

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