C O N T E X T 1 3 0 : J U LY 2 0 1 3 43 Operations (HOLTOP) and a local housing association came together at the instigation of local campaigners and the council to save the building. The council was successful in a compulsory purchase order with a back-to-back transfer to HOLTOP, and an agreed sale after conservation and repair to Hexagon Housing Association, creating five affordable flats.The creation of rented accommodation qualified for grant support from the London Development Agency. To begin with, our job as conservation architects was archaeological. Many of the building’s elaborate gothic window mouldings and the collapsed porch were buried and in pieces. The site was carefully cleared and excavated by hand, and all original fabric was catalogued and set aside. Most of the concrete staircase had been destroyed in an air raid in 1940 and poorly repaired. To avoid conjectural repair and further damage to surviving internal concrete supporting walls, archaeological records were used to recreate an 1870s timber staircase with turned timber balustrading. For the window mouldings, instead of traditional lime stucco, Drake used an unusual mixture of one part Portland cement probably gauged with one part hydraulic lime for workability and six parts mixed silica sand, creating an extremely dense, hard, cement-based material. Original mouldings had been formed on site as Drake’s system evidently could not standardise the production of Gothic window heads, which had to rely on the traditional skills of the craftsman due to their shape and slight variations in window widths produced by his apparatus. Analysis of the surface pebbledash The south window bay was recast. The numerous stitch repairs dramatically illustrate the many fractures that were repaired.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjgyMjA=