The Library Portraits

May 12, 2015The Libraryabbey

There is a very interesting group of portraits in The Library at Combermere Abbey, about which, unfortunately, we know very little indeed. Before Sir Kenneth Crossley bought the house and its estate in 1919, the last of the Viscounts Combermere to live at the house dispersed all the contents in a huge three-day sale (click here to read about the auction), and to the best of our knowledge there was absolutely nothing in the house when Sir Kenneth took possession.

It seems most likely that he purchased the portraits, and one criterion was that they were acquired specifically to fit the spaces on the Library wall which cried out for paintings, regardless of the subjects. The two portraits on canvas have been cut down and have additions top and bottom, which is a clue (not all were removed from their frames for restoration, so we cannot say if the width was reduced in all cases, but the others had part of the painted image showing on the sides of the stretchers).
There is no common denominator between them. All seem to be continental, and the one who is possibly of an Englishman – above and below – has no known association with the Abbey.

In my opinion this gentleman looks older than he probably was when he stood for the portrait because of his fleshy face, but was probably only in his thirties. His complexion is slightly florid, indicating that he is perhaps a country gentleman.
He is wearing full battle armour from themed-Sixteenth century, plus or minus ten years either way – coloured in burnished black, and with elaborate gold panels.

This is very expensive armour (made for fighting on horseback, of course); far more elaborate and ostentatious than that which a mere chevalier would have worn, and it is as fine as that worn by King Charles I in his portraits. This man’s armour is as ostentatious and expensive as that worn by the Princes Charles and Rupert in the 1637 double portrait by Anthony Van Dyck. He is very definitely of the officer class, and a senior one at that.

It is interesting to compare the gentleman in armour from Combermere with contemporary portraits of military figures. Above, James Butler, first Duke of Ormonde (school of Sir Peter Lely).

James II while Duke of York, 1665, Sir Peter Lely

King Charles II after 1660 (after Sir Peter Lely)

King William II (school of Sir Peter Lely). These portraits of four very great and grand men all show them in armour of the very highest quality. There are similarities in the leather strap-work and the metal detailing on the armour (especially with that of the Duke of Ormonde). None though has anything like the magnificence of the Combermere gentleman’s gold skirt. Note that three out of the four are also holding staffs of office.

The royal Princes Charles and Rupert in armour equalled in quality by that worn by our gentleman from the Combermere Abbey Library

Our man is wearing a far from elaborate lace cravat at his throat (unlike the more complex high lace collars usually worn by Royalist officers, in particular; it resembles one worn by the Royalist officer Marmaduke D-Arcy in his Civil War-era portrait), tied with a racy scarlet ribbon.

On his left hip is a sword with a fancy grip and pommel, both of which might be gilded. The scabbard is held by a brown belt which goes round his waist, and an attached strap which supports the scabbard. This is finely stitched. His protective skirt (or chausses), which takes the weight of the armour on his hips and helps protect his groin, is very finely wrought in gold thread. If this is real gold thread than it obviously a garment of very great value (and weight!).

He is wearing a gauntlet on his left hand, but his right hand is bare and is holding a rod or staff of office – much broader than a mere swagger stick – which is his mark of authority. It was probably made of ebony, topped and tailed in brass (or even gold). His other gauntlet sits on a table to his right, along with a helmet surmounted by a white plume.

While this portrait was being conserved it was revealed that another painting had been added below and over-painted

The gentleman now stands in an herbaceous border, albeit one that is upside down

The full length portrait of the man in armour was originally two thirds of its current length, though it is possible that the picture was full length originally and the lower portion was damaged. At some point the picture was extended downwards, with a new panel attached to the bottom of the existing picture.

Incredibly this new extension already had a rather high quality image on it already, as was revealed by x-rays. This painting was of flowers in an urn, on a shelf with one flower lying on the shelf – which now appears top left of this lower half of the painting, as the flower piece was attached upside down. The flower painting dates from the Seventeenth or Eighteenth century, so was later than the portrait. A smaller section from the flower picture had also been added to the top of the portrait.

It was then over-painted with the lower half of the body and the legs of the man in armour, against a dark brown background. The flower painting had been quite damaged before it was re-used (which is perhaps why it was re-used). The fillings of these damages did not show in the X-rays as they were made of gesso (chalk), whereas the whites in the flowers – being lead white – did show.

The question was what to do with these two images during the conservation process. To over-paint the flowers once more seemed a rather sad option, but the weight of paint on the man’s legs meant that fully restoring the flower painting was not viable. Had it been then there would have been an argument for removing the paint and fully restoring it, and then painting new ‘replica’ legs on the man in armour, on a replacement panel.

In fact the decision was made to remove the over-paint of the background and show the flowers, but to leave the legs – so that our man is now standing in a flowerbed, albeit an upside down flowerbed.

It is understanding that the portrait was the work of Gerrit von Honthorst, who was born in Utrecht in 1592, and died there in 1656. He was probably the son of Herman Gerritsz, who painted tapestry cartoons. He trained with Bloemaert, the leading local painter, before travelling to Rome. After returning to Utrecht in 1620, he began to specialise in portraiture, and was very fond of candle-light scenes.

Gerrit von Honthorst of Utrecht, almost certainly the painter of the portrait of the gentleman in armour

We know that he was working in London in 1628, in the court of King Charles I, and that he returned to The Hague in December of that year. He then was in the service of Prince Frederick Henry of Orange (died 1647), and was his favourite portrait painter. He also created a series of classical and historical pictures commissioned by King Christian IV of Denmark.
Honthorst’s chronology does not help us much with the identity of the sitter (and what is most surprising about this portrait is that there is no coat of arms or any inscription to indicate who this gentleman was).

He could have been an Englishman, painted in 1628, or he could have been an English Royalist painted in exile during The Commonwealth. The law of averages suggests that he was continental however; the over-riding piece of evidence is the very high status of his armour, which suggests that he was not English – because any Englishman as wealthy as he would be recognisable to us. Further research is needed, and we are hoping that the National Portrait Gallery will be able to assist us.

In terms of quality the best painting in this group is the one of Andreas Gail (above, and detail below). What we see is a stern-looking gentleman of some wealth, who is very certain of his position in society. Gaill (or von Gaill) was born in Cologne in 1526 and studied to be an advocate in his home town, as well as studying in Orleans, Leuven, and Bologna.

In 1558 he was appointed to the Imperial Chamber Court, and from 1569 onwards, he served on the Aulic Council in Vienna. Just prior to his death in 1587 he was Chancellor to the Elector of Cologne. He is remembered as a great jurist and man of law. His 1578 work Practicae observationes ad processum iudiciarium imperialis camerae was the first systematic compilation of Chamber Court jurisprudence, which exerted a great influence on the practice of law in the Holy Roman Empire, and served as a template for most later German compilations of court decisions.

In the Combermere portrait his profession is expressed by the letter in his right hand and the folded document in his left. Aged perhaps in his fifties (he was sixty one when he died), he wears a felt or fur cap, with an expensive fur coat or cape over his shoulders. The rest of his clothing is a very sober black, but he has an exquisitely-creased ruff at his throat, and is wearing a gold chain if three loops, with a medallion. His hair is shaved quite closely, though he has a generous but well-trimmed beard. To say he is unsmiling is an understatement.

An expert at the National Portrait Gallery made the point that Andreas’s style and obvious wealth makes him resemble a member of the international merchant elite of the Sixteenth century; “The way his opulent beaver pelt lining to his cloak is displayed is quite marked, and [if he indeed were] a merchant it would suggest that he trades with Muscovy, the prime source of fur in the European trade. The hat, chain seal ring and documents are all typical of merchant portraits. He must have been outstandingly successful to afford to purchase arms.”

In the top right corner of the painting we have his full coat of arms, helpfully. There is a helmet on the shield, which – unadorned by a coronet or crown, is the mark of a knight. The two red roses on the shield are part of the arms of Cologne. A symmetrical double-fleur de lys appears both on the lower half of the shield, and in the plume.

The original coat of arms was in fact given to the family in 1532 – when Andreas was six years old – by a “concession d’armoiries”. Régis de Gail, a descendant of Andreas, very kindly got in touch with us here at the Abbey and told us that the correct heraldic description of Andreas’s arms was:

Coupé : au premier d’or à deux roses à cinq feuilles de gueules boutonnées d’or ; au second d’azur à une fleur de lis partie de gueules (dextre) et d’or (senestre) ; L’écu timbré d’un casque de tournoi couronné d’or et orné de lambrequins de gueules et d’or ; Cimier : une fleur de lis partie de gueules et d’or, soutenue par un vol coupé d’or et d’azur, l’or chargé de deux roses de gueules boutonnées du champ.

Exactly the same coat of arms is shown on a 1557 portrait of Nicolaus von Gail, who was a cousin of Andreas (painted by Barthel Bruyn the Younger, 1530 – 1607).

The Gail family were persons of considerable importance, and that was reflected in their improving status. In 1545 they were presented with a lettre de confirmation de noblesse confirming their position in society (in German, an Adelspatent. On the first day of January 1573 Andreas von Gail received a diplôme d’ampliation de noblesse, which gave him and his descendents the title of Freiherr (literally a ‘free lord’ – equivalent to a position above a Knight but below a Baron) in perpetuity.

So far we do not know who painted this portrait, but our research continues.

A mono rendering of an earlier portrait of Andreas von Gail, circa 1560 by Pieter Pourbus

Andreas von Gaill’s coat of arms; a detail from a contemporary book plate in an edition of Practicae observationes ad processum iudiciarium imperialis camerae

The arms on the portrait of Andreas Gail are the same as those of his cousin, Nicolaus von Gail (on the left hand panel), seen here with his twenty one-year old wife, Sophia Von Wedigh in 1557.

The two remaining portraits are believed to be a matched pair of a husband and wife, from the studio of Sir Anton van Dashorst Mor. Born around 1517 in Holland, he was a very successful portrait painter, and painted many crowned heads, including King John III of Portugal, Catherine of Portugal, William of Orange, King Philip of Spain, Margaret of Parma, and – most famously in England – Queen Mary I.

In his lifetime (he died in 1577) he was referred to as Antoon, Anthonius, Anthonis or Mor van Dashorst, and as Antonio Moro, Anthony More – though he signed the majority of his portraits simply as Anthonis Mor. Born in Utrecht, then one of the great art centres of western Europe, his first known work is from 1538. He worked in Brussels as well as in Utrecht, but also in Denmark, Portugal, Spain and England.

He came to England, probably in 1533, to paint a likeness of Queen Mary I for Philip of Spain, whose father, Charles V, was in negotiations for the marriage of his son to the Queen for – as ever in royal circles at the time – diplomatic and dynastic reasons.

Antonis Mor’s famous portrait of Queen Mary I of England

Mor painted at least three versions of Mary’s likeness, and the best known of these is now our most familiar image of the Queen. The portrait was well received in Spain and the wedding went ahead. Philip became King Philip II of Spain on Charles V’s abdication two years later. As the Spanish husband of an English Queen, Philip was hugely unwelcome in England, and he spent most of his marriage abroad (he returned to Spain in 1559, never to return to England – taking Mor with him) with his highly strung wife pining pathetically for his return. Throughout the 1560s the Anthonis Mor seems to have commuted around western Europe, undertaking portraits of ever-higher prestige.

Mor and his studio were very fond of depicting their sitters looking forward, but with their heads slightly off centre – particularly to the sitter’s left side, as the man in the Combermere pair does. At least this is true of male subjects; females – including the Abbey’s lady and Queen Mary – have their heads turned slightly to their right – though again the eyes look straight at the viewer.

Details, above and below, of the heads of the man and his wife

The man is dressed very soberly in black, but has white ruffs at his collar and wrists, which are consistent with those on other Mor portraits, but not exactly the same as any others. Given his clothing, and the folded document in his left hand, he might have been a lawyer. The National Portrait Gallery commented, “This man is mid-Sixteenth century, quietly and expensively dressed, and could be from a range of backgrounds; the parquet floor makes me think he is probably continental”.

The heraldry on the woman’s portrait suggests that the woman was in fact either an heiress in her own right, or the man’s widow (her arms are shown in a diamond rather than on a shield, indicating that she bore the arms in her own right). She is clearly Continental, probably from the Low Countries, and dates from the Sixteenth century.

She is more extravagantly dressed than the man, with red velvet sleeves on her panelled dress. Her mob cap, with its semi-circular ‘ears’ is simple (and very similar to a slightly more elaborate one which appears in a largely contemporaneous portrait of a lady by Adriaen Thomas), but her winged collar is again more elaborate. She has the index finger and thumb of her left hand round a long gold chain, which is knotted at intervals, and goes round her (tiny) waist and reaches to the ground. In her right hand she holds a pair of very fine gloves.

At this point in time gloves were often shown in portraits, and they represented elegance and luxury. A hundred years later fine gloves were worn by the merchant classes, and the truly wealthy (and snobbish) therefore made a point of not being seen with them. The very best kid-leather gloves came from Spain. The lady also has two expensive-looking gold and jewelled rings on the fingers of her left hand; displayed so that the viewer can not miss them.

The proportion on both these full length portraits is slightly suspect. In particular the lady’s head seems too small for her body. The man looks to be in his mid-thirties, while his wife may well be considerably younger.
Both pictures are on panel. The woman’s costume had been completely over-painted, in a rather more decorative but similar style to the original, and the overpaint was fairly soluble so it was done comparatively recently. This over-painting had been done to cover extensive small losses, and has now been meticulously retouched. The losses were so numerous that the conservators wondered if it had been in a fire and had been blistered. Tests showed that the losses on the portrait of the husband were so extensive that we decided it was not realistic to remove the over-paint. Overall these two full length portraits had not been badly over-cleaned.

So far as the identity of the man and woman are concerned, there is a distinctive coat of arms on both portraits; one being a marital variation of the other. Both are quartered with blue and yellow wavy lines – similar to the arms of the Spanish family of Urich. We are currently consulting heraldry experts and hope to be able to update this question soon.

The coat of arms on the man’s portrait, above, and on the woman’s, below.

From Thomas le Plumer In The 1200s to Steve And Paul Today

May 11, 2015Crafts and Tradesabbey

We know the names of all the great men and women who have lived at Combermere Abbey over the past nine centuries, but – other than those who appeared in the censuses from the mid-Nineteenth century onwards – very few of the names of the lower orders; the servants and workmen who made their living in the house or on the estate.

Of the few we can identify though one was John Jenyns, who was a tanner working at the Abbey. This was dirty and smelly work, and Jenyns would have been low down in the Abbey’s pecking order, and not someone to sit next to in the refectory. We know his name though because he was accused of the murder of one of the monks in 1520, so his identity is preserved in history (and the actions of the Abbot at the time suggest that he was indeed guilty). Two hundred years later we have the name of another of the Abbey’s lower orders; Ralph the Fisherman. For reasons we can only guess at his name – and his alone – was included on the oldest known map of the estate. And then there was Thomas.

He was Thomas le Plumer – Thomas the plumber. He seems to have lived in Nantwich in the Thirteenth century, and was responsible for maintaining the water courses on the Abbey buildings. Although he was a common tradesmen he was one of great note, because he appears again, working on King Edwards I’s castles in North Wales; he was definitely employed at Conwy Castle – and, not far from Combermere, he worked on repairs to Beeston Castle which were undertaken in the first decade of that century. He worked there alongside Hugh de Dykemoke, whose responsibility was the ditches and ramparts; Ithel the smith (particularly interesting because he was Welsh); and – far more prestigious and better paid – Richard l’Enginour (engineer). Thomas was a skilled man, and his weekly wage would have been much higher than that of a mere labourer – perhaps as much as three pence a day (when a pig would have cost three shillings, and a cow ten shillings).

Thomas’s work would, primarily, have been channelling the clean water coming into the building, and foul water going safely out. Although wood was used for pipes, the medium of his trade was lead. Equally, it was his responsibility to ensure that rain water flowed off the roof and into the drains (and from there into the mere); whether it was stone, timber or brick, rain has always been one of the most damaging elements for any building, and the men who built the great Abbeys of western Europe certainly knew that.

‘Plomb’, as anyone who has filled up a car with fuel in France will know, means lead (‘sans plomb’ – unleaded) – from the Latin ‘plumbum’. Therefore, a plumber was a man who worked in lead. These days plumbers tend to work in plastic, but on buildings of historical importance such as Combermere Abbey it is still lead that is used to channel rainwater and move it safely off the structure.

Lead is malleable and easy worked, but is strong once formed, and – importantly – water-proof. It is also very heavy; one cubic foot of lead weighs around 500 lbs, which is two and a half times the weight of an average adult British man. It was first used by humans in modern-day Turkey around 6400BC, and it was extensively – and very skilfully – used for water courses and taps by the Romans.

Thomas’s Twenty First century counterparts at the Abbey is a father and son team, Steve and Paul Hempstock from Poynton near Stockport. Steve formed his company, Northwest Lead, back in 1992, and now has all of forty years experience in the business.

Over the years he has undertaken a large and impressive number of projects on buildings of historic and architectural importance, working for English Heritage, the National Trust, the Church of England, and local authorities – as well as privately-owned houses such as Combermere. They include Sudbury Hall, Derbyshire, Keddleston Hall, Derbyshire, John Rylands Library, Manchester, Attingham Park, Shropshire, Shrewsbury Castle, Dunham Massey Hall and Lyme Hall. Although they operate mostly in the North West and the north Midlands, he and Paul have worked all over the country. As well as lead and plastic, they utilise copper, zinc, stainless steel and aluminium (all of which would doubtless have astonished, and then delighted, Thomas le Plumer).

Steve’s father, James, was a master plumber, so Paul is now a third generation craftsman in lead. That notion of the work being a true craft was behind the formation of the Lead Contractors Association, which was created in 1985, and which Steve joined two years later – and of which he has been on the Council for twenty six years, and been its Chairman twice. Its purpose is to constantly improve the standards of lead workers in the construction industry, and monitor and regulate its affiliated companies. The Association is held in great respect for this work, and organisations such as English Heritage and the National Trust, as well as professionals in the heritage renovation industry such as architects, turn to its members as their first port of call.

The UK, Steve says, is probably the world’s largest user of lead in construction and conservation, relative to its size. Of all the work he has undertaken over the decades, two which he thinks of in particular are domes – where complex curves present even more of a challenge than relatively straight forward work such as at Combermere. His company’s work on the dome at Birmingham Art Gallery won them The Murdoch Award in 2012 (described as “the ultimate accolade in lead-work” – which North West Lead also won in 2010), and the dome of the church at Sir Titus Salt’s model village of Saltaire in Yorkshire.

The tower and dome of Saltaire church. The new lead on the dome is Northwest Lead’s work

At Combermere Abbey the firm used around three tonnes of lead, of which about 90% would have been recycled from previously used and salvaged lead, and the firm’s men were on site, on and off, for eight weeks. By their standards it wasn’t a particularly big job. When we spoke to Steve he was looking at what would be a far larger job at the mighty mansion of Chatsworth in Derbyshire (which he feared might be too big for his firm, in fact), and a job at Thornbridge Hall, also in Derbyshire – which dates from the Twelfth century but was re-built in the mid-Nineteenth century.

As I say, the great houses Northwest Lead has helped to conserve is huge: At Sudbury Hall in Derbyshire, the National Trust’s Seventeenth century treasure of a house (and previously the home of the Lords Vernon), North West Lead used more than sixty tons of sandcast lead in the restoration of the Victorian Wing, incorporating a unique eaves ventilation system, with removable panels in the flat roof sub-structure so that the underside condition of the lead could be frequently monitored.

In Liverpool, working in conjunction with City of Liverpool Architects Department, Steve created four French pavilion roofs for the Municipal Buildings, each being covered with eighteen tons of lead. The job also involved the renewal of all the linking roofs and a large first floor roof in the centre of the building as a light well to the ground floor public areas. The astonishing total of one hundred and sixty tons of milled lead was used on this project.

Over at the Manchester Museum in Manchester City Centre, Steve and Paul made around nine hundred lead-clad panels were manufactured in their workshop, which were delivered to site and fitted to the four elevations of the museum’s new extension. On this job Northwest Lead worked in close conjunction with Ian Simpson Architects to create an aesthetically pleasing and technically correct installation. It was essential to ensure that the panel surfaces were blemish-free as all the lead was supplied on pallets, cut to size and in flat sheet rather than rolls, with the corners of each panel folded by machine.

As Steve says, the materials used in the lead-workers tools have changed, but not their shape and form. If Thomas’s ghost had been walking the ramparts of the Abbey in the late spring of 2015 he would certainly have recognised what Northwest Lead’s men were about, and the way in which they were going about their work.

At the very top of the building, at roof level, the cappings are all covered in lead to avoid rainwater ingress into the walls

These bespoke water shutes are hand-made in lead, and throw excess rainwater clear of the sides of the Abbey. The shutter acts like a weir to slow the water. Each of these rather beautiful fittings in more than four feet long (and very heavy!)

The craftsmen have built weather strips into the brickwork of the chimney, which will form a seal with the roofing materials

These beautifully-made steps lead up to the chimney close to the northern corner of the roof, giving access for maintenance. Soon newly-laid tiles will overlap the lap on left and right

Master Joinery In The North Wing

April 28, 2015Crafts and Tradesabbey

The replacement woodwork of window frames and staircases in the North Wing has been the work of RM Jones Joinery of Ruthin in North Wales. The firm’s owner is Meredydd Jones, and his family has been active in house building and woodworking in and around Ruthin for several generations. Meredydd worked as a joiner on building sites originally, and started his own company near the town – in a unit rented from his uncle, who was also in the building trade – some thirty five years ago. The company built their own factory eight years ago on a new industrial estate just to the north of the town – close to Ruthin’s well-known crafts centre (which was completely re-built eight years ago, and on which RM Jones worked, of course).

In the firm’s early days he had, as he says, “just one or two lads” working for him, but nowadays the figure is nearer to two dozen. “Our core work is staircases and windows”, he says, “but we also do cabinet work and kitchens. Recently we’ve built a number of porches and large external timber balconies.”

RM Jones’s work at the Abbey has included staircases, and a large number of windows – and internal fittings such as skirting boards are yet to be undertaken. All of which were made with great precision to exactly replicate the original items. Very interestingly, the original window frames had been made out of a variety of woods. Some were in oak, as one would expect – the Tudor timber frame is oak and there was a lot of oak available locally – but there were also softwoods, some bits of Douglas Fir, and even mahogany. RM Jones has used seasoned oak throughout – though a lot of the new oak is imported from France, which would have either amused or horrified both the Tudors and the Georgians.

In RM Jones’s workshop the Combermere window frames are stripped and, where possible, repaired. It’s slow, manual work.

Some of the carcasses were originally made within rectangular frames, as above and below.

A partly restored window, with as brace keeping the longer sides square

Two hundred years ago this process, the first cut of new wood, would have been undertaken over a five foot-deep saw-pit, with the blade of a long, double-handled saw sitting vertically – with one man up top and one poor unfortunate below, sweaty and covered in sawdust.

The factory’s single most expensive piece of equipment; a computer-controlled cutter and former, which can handle very complex designs very quickly.

Assembly of a completed window frame (under the care of a very happy worker)

A window casing in the spray booth awaiting paint

Above and below; finished windows ready to be transported to Combermere

It was one thing for the old window frames to be taken out of the Abbey and be transported to Ruthin so that they could be measured precisely and then reproduced, but with the stair cases the measurements had to be taken in situ, against irregular, curving walls. “We were able to pull apart some parts of the original stairs, but for the rest we designed it as we went along, making sure that it was in keeping with the original in so far we had it”, Meredydd says, “That was true of both the stairs themselves and the hand-rails. When it came to the measurements, top to bottom, to be sure that the treads begin and end at exactly the right point we did cheat a bit; we have a computer programme which works it out for us” – which would have utterly amazed their Tudor forebears (and perhaps lead to accusations of witchcraft).

Many of the original window cases fell apart as the joiners removed them from the building, in which case all the pieces had to be kept in one job lot to be re-assembled in the workshop so that they could be either repaired or completely replaced. In other cases there were salvageable pieces of wood from one window which could be grafted into another. As Meredydd showed me though, they were far from being all the same; they were of course hand-made, so no two were in fact the same dimensions, and the radiuses of the arches within the gothick forms were different.

Once the woodwork was complete the windows were spray-painted in-house. Each received three coats of a ‘breathable’, water-based Teknos paint (made in Britain, near Banbury, in Oxfordshire). The painting takes place in a dedicated spray booth and the items are then moved to an adjoining room where they are hung and dried. When you see the finished job it is immediately apparent that spray-painting gives a far superior finish to brush-painting. These window frames will not need re-painting for at least a generation.

A new window from RM Jones in place in the North Wing – high up on the south-facing return. Note the old iron strap re-used on the new wood below the window

Business, Meredydd says, has been very good for the firm in recent years, even through the recession. They are at the top end of the market, producing mostly bespoke work, and people will always pay for the highest quality work. “The Abbey work has been a big job for us, and very satisfying”, he says. “We delivered some windows yesterday and it was very nice to see them finished and going out of the workshop.”

The New – Very New – Battlements For The North Wing

April 24, 2015Crafts and Tradesabbey

When the Abbey facades were gothicised two hundred years ago it was not done awfully well, at least in terms of the quality of the work, and the current restoration is intended to be more durable. That’s why the battlements at the Abbey are being replaced in – whisper it – glass fibre.

Innovative Composites in Sussex were given the job of making a hundred and twenty new pieces (plus a few spares, just in case) to replace the original stone crenellation. They made left and right moulds of a cleaned-up early-Nineteenth century original, plus a number of finials.

The notion of glass fibre battlements might sound like heresy, but in fact it makes very good sense – and is indicative of a major turning point in the thinking of English Heritage. Previously, with regard to Listen buildings, English Heritage has insisted – understandably, many would say – that during restoration work materials must be replaced like-for-like. Thus, as the battlements at the Abbey were originally made of stone, the replacements must be too.

A first template goes into place, creating a line which the crenellation will follow

The hollow forms are completed in wood (four photos above) . . .

The GRP mouldings fit over the wooden formers; this is – as you can see – a right hand piece

It will be an easy and quick job to secure the battlements in place

Making the point for this approach, the architectural conservator Douglas Kent has written, “To William Morris and the other founders of the SPAB [Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings], the value of an old building lay in its physical fabric. To them, an old building was more than simply the sum of its constituent parts. It had the ability to excite memory and anticipation, serving as a physical manifestation of the past and a potential source of influence on the future. The sheer antiquity of the building, the accumulated evidence of how it had changed over time and the patina of age and weathering of its surfaces were considered to be of the utmost importance. Surviving fabric was finite and, once destroyed, could never be retrieved.

“While, therefore, a whole variety of values needs to be taken into consideration, and some subjective judgements must be made when planning work to a building, it is the value of the fabric that should remain of primary significance. The retention of genuine historic fabric and the avoidance of misleading restoration will allow present and future generations to interpret the significance for themselves in their own way and on the basis of physical evidence.”

There were always subtle problems with the like-for-like philosophy though; some of the gothick details on the house which appeared to be stone never in fact were. Elements such as the ‘stone’ finials were in fact cheaply made in wood, and never had a good chance of passing the tests of time and the weather. Similarly, the exterior facing of the Abbey, which looked like stone, was far from it; it was a tiny wash of ashlar over a poor lath-and-plaster base. It was inscribed geometrically to make it look like stone blocks – and those incisions were in fact the best workmanship on the facades. It would have been ludicrous (and impossibly expensive) to have insisted that all the exterior walls been faced with new stone just because they looked as if they had been for two centuries.

It may also be that past builders simply got it wrong. The ashlar façade of the Abbey is not weight-supporting; all the structural weight is borne by the Tudor timber frame. Over the decades and centuries this has buckled, as one would expect, but the extra weight on its roof-line created by stone battlements and other details would simply have been too great a weight for the Sixteenth century timber-work. It could be argued that extra supports, intrusive and very certainly inappropriate would have been required. It is certainly true that less weight on the timber structure is a good thing.

Stone or GRP?

The other important factor is the development of new materials and techniques. If the early-Nineteenth century builders had been able to make the battlements and other details in glass fibre then they most certainly would have done so. There was never any suggestion of them having a military and defensive role; having to withstand cannon fire and shelter musketeers!

A GRP finial ready to go into place on the roof-line. In stone this would need several man to life it; in GRP you can put it under your arm and walk round with it

The fact that suppliers can make, colour and texture materials such as glass fibre as exactly as they can is an argument in itself. Even from close up (and they are about fifty feet off the ground) the glass fibre work on the Abbey will be indistinguishable from the original stone. It is now possible to restore even Grade I Listed buildings such as Combermere Abbey without the insistence on like-for-like materials, and without comprising either the authenticity or integrity of the structure and its setting.

Innovative Composites can boast of more than thirty years of experience in handling a massive range of such work; this might be the first time that they have re-created battlements (their nearest work to dare is probably new components for York Minster, the Tower of London, and Brighton Pier), but their range to date includes a lot of architectural work, as well as marine, automotive and furnishing commissions. They offer a complete consultancy service, initiating projects from scratch. Many items they manufacture are on-offs; in other cases they may create thousands.

Every aspect of their design and build process is in-house at their factory in Newhaven, between Brighton and Eastbourne on the Sussex coast. From on-screen design and design documentation all concepts can be visualised in 3-D. This is then followed by material selection, and a full costing, before the actual manufacturing of the components. Not exactly how the masons worked at Combermere two hundred years ago.

Glass Fibre – now known correctly as GRP, for Glass Reinforced Plastic – was developed by the War Ministry during the Second World War. It was light, strong, easily and cheaply moulded, and very durable, and it soon found a role in many industries. Designers loved it; it gave them the ability to make complex curves without ant loss or strength, and objects could be turned out singly or in huge numbers. Throughout the Sixties in particular it was very much seen as the material of the future, and on television it graced many editions of ‘Tomorrows’ World’.

A composite is a general term applied to reinforced plastics, but in the case of GRP it is glass fibres reinforcing a plastic layer, hence GRP (glass reinforced plastics). Different types of fibre can be used such as carbon and Aramid but the most common applications employ the use of glass fibre. The plastic is thermosetting, most often polyester or vinylester, but other plastics like epoxy are also used. Fibreglass can be applied to a multitude of uses due to its unique properties and is both stiff and strong in tension and compression.

New GRP battlement cappings from Innovative Composites waiting to be unwrapped and put in place

One great advantage of fibreglass is that although it can be painted any colour, it can also be ‘self-coloured’, which means that the colour is introduced into the resin mix before the moulding is filled. Thus the colour goes all the way through the item in question, so if it is scratched the scratch doesn’t show because the colour does not change. The colour for the Abbey’s crenellation was “dirtied up a bit” to be a good match with the surrounding stone-work. GRP can be given any finish or texture to resemble almost any other material. The GRP can also be treated to almost completely avoid weathering or any other degradation.

Mike Merrall of Innovative Composites with the crenellation toppings and finials for the Abbey’s roofline

The materials used at the Abbey over the last nine hundred years have included stone, wood, brick and ironwork – and now we can add Glass Reinforced Plastic to that list.

The original crenellation on the north wing (with the Wellington wing, now demolished, to the right of the photo – as seen in an Edwardian postcode