4 C O N T E X T 1 3 0 : J U LY 2 0 1 3 Painshill’s grotto restored The restored 18th-century crystal grotto at Painshill landscape garden in Cobham, Surrey has been reopened. The grotto is a centrepiece within the historic landscape garden created by the Honourable Charles Hamilton between 1738 and 1773. The heritage project has been supported by private trusts and the Heritage Lottery Fund, which awarded Painshill Park Trust a grant of £747,400 for restoration works. Thousands of crystals of calcite, gypsum, quartz and fluorite have been used to restore the folly, which historically has been recognised as the finest stalactite grotto in Europe. The crystals have been embedded with lime mortar on to a framework of inverted wooden cones, to recreate the dazzling stalactite effect of the original grotto. Inspired by the grottoes in Italian Renaissance gardens, Charles Hamilton commissioned the grotto maker Joseph Lane in 1760 to construct this folly for a sum of £8,000 (the equivalent of £600,000 today). The restoration has combined extensive research of archive material and archaeological data. The Glorious Dead English Heritage has carried out conservation works on the Cenotaph inWhitehall for the forthcoming first world war centenary commemorations. The Cenotaph’s Portland stone is naturally susceptible to weathering and pollution. Although English Heritage carries out maintenance work every year, a more thorough cleaning was needed. The architect Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869–1944) produced his design for the Cenotaph within hours of the peace treaty marking the formal end of the first world war being signed in 1919. Intended only as a temporary part of the celebrations which followed, the Cenotaph was originally made of wood and plaster. However, the public reaction to the monument was so strong that Lutyens was commissioned to design a permanent memorial. Lutyens’ design is more complex than is at first obvious. There are no straight lines. Instead every surface is subtly curved with the raking verticals meeting at an imaginary point 1,000 feet above the ground. The idea was to ‘bridge the space between Heaven and Earth’. The Cenotaph was unveiled by King George V as he made his way to the ceremony for the UnknownWarrior inWestminster Abbey on 11 November 1920. Grants for war memorials Since 2004, English Heritage and the Wolfson Foundation have jointly funded a Grants for War Memorials scheme run in partnership with theWar Memorials Trust. £800,000 has been given to more than 250 projects. The annual amount available has been doubled to £200,000 for the next two years. Individual grants of from £3,000 to £30,000 can be given for up to 75 per cent of costs for repair, conservation, cleaning and work to improve the legibility of inscriptions. Three of the five latest grants include £30,000 to the Oldham Liaison of Ex-Service Associations for the repair of a Grade II listed memorial from 1923 in Oldham, Greater Manchester, which features a group of soldiers cast in bronze atop a large granite plinth; £5,000 towards the restoration of a Grade II listed peace memorial outside Watford Town Hall depicting three men on an inscribed limestone plinth. One man represents the fallen, one the wounded and one victory; and £10,000 to assist with repairs to the Grade II listed Portland stone clock tower in Stockwell, south London, which was built to remember local men who never returned from the first world war. English Heritage is also working with theWar Memorials Trust on a new online crowd-sourcing database called War Memorials Online. Members of the public are invited to log-in, and enter photographs and information about their local war memorials, with an emphasis on noting their condition. War Memorials Online will help to identify which are in need of repair and so help with the effective distribution of grants from theWar Memorials Grant Scheme and other sources. Money where your mouth is Are you restoring a house (or a barn, a castle or windmill) for your own use? Would be willing to share the pleasures and pains of the experience with Context readers? Please contact editorial@ihbc. org.uk to discuss a possible article. The south transept piazza and undercroft area atYork Minster has been renewed.William Anelay was the building conservation specialist, and Arroll & Snell the architect. The Painshill stalactite grotto has been recognised as the finest in Europe.
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