Skillington Workshop

23/05/2024

North Macedonia part 3: one of the things we are blessed with here is really good mature lime putty. We took a trip out to meet our supplier, a farmer about an hour’s drive from Stobi, who regularly burns lime in a traditional kiln built into a slope. He tells us that in his memory there were a hundred lime burners in the region and now there are only a couple. As well as burning lime he also farms the lovely sweet peppers that seem to be everywhere in the Balkans and grows to***co. Captions are added to the photos.

11/05/2024

North Macedonia pt 2
We’re a third of the way through our exemplar conservation project at Stobi and are making good progress.
The streetscape survives really well and it’s easy to picture the shops and houses on our walk up to the Theodosian Palace each day. I’ve captioned the photos to explain more.
We’re staying in the site ‘barracks’ and eating our meals outside in a cool spot under the walnut trees, with the rest of the staff on site. All feels very civilised despite being very basic.

07/05/2024

North Macedonia part 1: Yesterday three of us, Theo, Josh and myself (David) flew out to Thessaloniki before being picked up and taken to Stobi, which will be our base for the next 3 weeks. We are being joined in turn by Laura and Emma, and Skillingtons are out here working with Graham Abrey (Ingram Consulting), for the Balkan Heritage Foundation.
Stobi is a Roman city archaeological site mainly dating from the Early Imperial (1st century BC) to late antiquity 6th C AD) periods. It’s vast, with many important buildings and mosaics, with much unexcavated. Next to the River Vardar in North Macedonia it’s easy to appreciate the strategic position.
We are to be conserving a section of wall from the Theodosian Palace as an exemplar of good practice using lime mortars.
More updates to come!

28/11/2023

The Market Cross at Leighton Buzzard has had all scaffolding and hoarding removed, and the works complete. All on budget and on schedule, and all looking good. The largely medieval Cross has had various schemes of repair, restoration and conservation over the centuries but the five statues are original 15th century work, as is the vaulting and many of the carved details. The photos tell more of the story of this fascinating project, one that we are very proud to have done.

02/06/2023

Here are some nice Friday photos of two of the jobs we’re doing this week. At Rievaulx Abbey on the Yorkshire Moors we’re doing some repairs to the Shrine of Abbot William; and at Leighton Buzzard (Bedfordshire) we’re just starting on the conservation of the largely medieval Market Cross. Being in a busy town centre and being five-sided have their challenges for access. We’ll post updates on the Cross over the next few months as we get stuck into it.

29/04/2023

There’s been lots of publicity about this current job, which Theo and Emma are working on.

A 600-year-old tomb carved in memory of a Suffolk earl and his family is being taken apart by specialist conservators to be treated for a beetle infestation.

The particular beetle in question is the Death Watch Beetle.

The tomb of Michael de la Pole, the 2nd Earl of Suffolk, and his wife Katherine was constructed in about 1410 and is in St Andrew's Church, in Wingfield. To save money at the time, the effigies were not made of stone but carved in wood and plastered to look like stone.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-65353716

22/12/2022

It seemed appropriate to be working at this well site in Northumbria at the winter solstice. Indeed, we had quite a number of visitors come to visit and have a quiet moment- just to be there that day. Lady’s Well, near Rothbury, looked after now by the National Trust (our client here) was next to a Roman Road and has been thought to have been of Christian significance since the 6th century - doubtless following pre-Christian tradition. Our task is the repair of a historic statue damaged by Storm Arwen. It’s certainly a remote site - definitely 4x4 access only!

24/11/2022

The Lindisfarne Gospels exhibition at the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle runs to 3rd December. Skillingtons installed the stone objects on display, but only today saw the gallery as the public see it. Wonderful, highly recommended, and much as we think the Anglo-Saxon stone sculpture is superb to see the Lindisfarne Gospel, dating to about 700AD at first hand was truly awesome.

04/08/2022

We don't post many links but can't help but share this one. A 13th century shipwreck found off the coast of Dorset was found to contain at least two Purbeck marble grave covers, with different designs previously thought to be of part of a dating sequence but clearly here in use at the same time. They were fairly roughly finished, clearly to be polished once at their destination. The link has a great video showing them being uncovered. Fascinating evidence of the trade of the Purbeck marblers.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/englands-oldest-surviving-shipwreck-is-a-13th-century-merchant-vessel-180980474/

Carrying a cargo of locally sourced limestone, the so-called Mortar Wreck likely sank off the Dorset coast during the reign of Henry III

21/05/2022

We are lucky to work at so many beautiful historic buildings - such as our recently started project at Ely Cathedral. We are restoring the floor in St. Catherine's Chapel, at the west end of the main cathedral, to Gilbert Scott's mid-19th century design of encaustic tiles, Purbeck marble and beautiful inlaid stone pavings - all having removed a more modern marble floor. At the same time we are starting the survey and investigation stage in advance of a project to conserve the stonework inside the main entrance porch, the 'Galilee Porch'.

30/11/2021

We’re giving some advice at Westminster Cathedral today - a real treat for anybody interested in decorative stone. Here are some examples of the marble cladding.

25/10/2021

We've recently completed the dismantling and rebuilding of the monument to George and Anne Meares of about 1631 at Great Witchingham church in Norfolk. The old iron fixings tying it into the wall had in places completely rusted through and the wall core behind had collapsed. we had to install temporary props before carefully taking it to pieces, repairing breaks, and rebuilding with stainless steel fixings. The monument, supposed to be by William Wright of Charing Cross, was previously undisturbed but the inscription panel had three old iron ties across a fracture - which must have been set there when it was first made. It looks great now its rebuilt and should be good for at least another 400 years!

30/08/2021

David Carrington is giving a talk on our recent work to the famous Southwell Minster Chapter House sculpture at this forthcoming conference https://www.southwellminster.org/events/event/leaves-conference/

Join us and an international team of experts to explore a vast array of fascinating topics including: Medieval Cross Slabs, Mason’s marks, and the surviving medieval glass found in the Minster

22/07/2021

Work in progress on the very fine Romanesque doorway at St Cuthbert’s church, Fishlake, near Doncaster. Lots of issues with the magnesian limestone - soluble salts, pollution crusts, bats, and a 1930s treatment with ‘Silicaseal’ - not to mention 850 years of British weather ….

23/06/2021

Durham Cathedral - cleaning of the font and font canopy, dating to 1663 during Bishop Cosins time, continues apace while we move on to survey the famous Castel clock and the 14th century Neville monuments.

08/06/2021

An old job of ours has recently featured in a ‘monument of the month’ column on the Church Monuments Society’s very fine website - https://churchmonumentssociety.org/monument-of-the-month/rebuilding-sir-roger

The monument to Sir Roger Smith (d.1665) and his two wives, son and grandson at St. Michael and All Angels church, Edmondthorpe, Leicestershire

03/06/2021

This week we’ve been lucky enough to be working at St Albans, Lincoln and Durham cathedrals. At Durham we’re looking at the 17th C wooden font cover - so big it needs 5 lifts if scaffold to get to the top! The views are superb. What a lovely place to be.

08/05/2021

This was an absolutely fantastic project to have carried out over the last year or so. We should have guessed that stonecarver Alan Micklethwaite's nod to working during the pandemic would grab headline news! It's a small head just a few inches across at the bottom of a pinnacle, with the mask carved in such a way that it could have been cut back to reveal a 'normal' face - but it was an instant hit and so has stayed. We imagine visitors for years to come searching for the Covid face! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-57023017

The restoration of a shrine takes more than a year, having been interrupted by the pandemic.

07/04/2021

The late 13th century carvings in the Chapter House at Southwell Minster (Nottinghamshire) are amongst the jewels of medieval stone sculpture. Famed for their use of naturalistic plant forms and wonderful human, animal and mythical beast representations they survive in remarkably good condition. Recent research has shown that they were once brightly painted and gilt, although there is negligible trace left to the naked eye. We are proud to be engaged as specialist conservators to carry out sensitive cleaning, localised repair and some poulticing to reduce soluble salt levels. The carvings extend to the Slype, the passageway connecting the Chapter House to the north choir ambulatory (walkway), and our contract covers these too. This is all being done as part of The Leaves of Southwell project for main contractors Croft Building & Conservation Ltd.

01/04/2021

Our work at Furness Abbey in Cumbria is featured here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-cumbria-56592010

We get up close to Furness Abbey as a 10-year project to preserve the ruins nears completion.

23/03/2021

The last of our London Bridge themed posts – for now at least. Here we move to the Brookwood Cemetery, near Woking in Surrey. The ‘London Necropolis’ is the largest cemetery in the UK and one of the largest in Europe. With grounds both for non-Conformists and for Anglicans it was connected to London by special railway lines, it started to be used in about 1852.

Many famous people are buried here. Some of our favourites are Rebecca West (1892-1983), Giulio Salviati (1843-98) the Venetian glass mosaicist, William de Morgan (1839-1917), John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) and Dame Zaha Hadid (1950-2016).

As well as providing burial plots for the newly deceased of London it also came to serve as a site for relocating burials en masse from City churchyards which were being impinged upon by the rapid 19th century growth of the capital. Churches to have such mass re-burial sites include St Magnus the Martyr (see our last post, and the London Bridge link), whose plot is marked by a marble pedestal and obelisk.

The inscription tells us that ‘In pursuance of a faculty granted 1893… the human remains were on sanitary grounds removed from the vaults and places of burial under the church of St Magnus the Martyr …’

The photos make it look quite small, but the Giant Sequoia tree in the background is huge. The pedestal alone is about 1.5m high and the whole weighs around 4 tonnes. Building it on soft ground was not the best of ideas though and, in common with many other pedestals in the cemetery it had toppled over, burying the obelisk deep in the ground. We have carefully dismantled the pedestal and excavated the obelisk, formed a new, wider, reinforced concrete raft nearby, cleaned the marble using a DOFF superheated steam cleaner, and rebuilt it.

19/03/2021

Continuing the London Bridge theme from our last post, the church of St Magnus the Martyr stood at the foot of the old Bridge on the north side of the Thames. There are even stones from the old Bridge in the churchyard. Burned down in the Great Fire, which started nearby, with The Monument standing across the road, the church was rebuilt by Wren in 1671-6. It is a fine example of Wren’s work, with some 18th century alterations. There are two particularly important burials there, to the renowned 14th century architect Henry Yeveley, and to Miles Coverdale, translator of the New Testament.

Coverdale was vicar here in 1563-5. Buried originally at St Bartholomew-by-the-Exchange he was reburied at St Magnus in 1840. To mark the association there were two marble memorials set up in the south aisle, both of which had become rather dirty over the years, having also lost much of the paint from the inscriptions. We were commissioned to sensitively clean the marble tablets, the larger one being by the sculptor George Sharp of Gloucester in a gothic revival style, and to touch-in the lettering. Existing paint was carefully retained and our restoration work being matched to the tone of the existing ‘black’ lettering, painting up to rather than over it. The whole is now readily legible from the ground.

Our final post on this London theme to follow later!

18/03/2021

London Bridge forms a common bond to three jobs we've been busy with since the New Year. There was a bridge here in Roman times, probably of wood, and one of a succession of wooden bridges which got burnt down before the first stone bridge was begun in 1176. Continuing to form a major crossing point of the Thames to the present day, a new bridge was built with five stone arches in 1823-31, designed by Rennie, only to be replaced in 1967-72 by the present cantilevered concrete structure. Rennie's bridge was sold and rebuilt in Arizona!

To the south bank of the bridge is Southwark Cathedral, and on the north side in the City the church of St. Magnus the Martyr. Both have a history interconnected with the Bridge, and there lies the common thread between our work at both.

In the Middle Ages Southwark Cathedral was the priory church of St. Mary Overie, founded in 1106, and rebuilt in the 13th century. Little of that period survives, but remarkably the sides of the Priors Door are hidden on the north side of the nave. Skillingtons undertook a survey of this soot-blackened feature last year and have been cleaning and consolidating the stonework over the last couple of months. Cleaning was carried out primarily by a laser, consolidation using nanolimes to bind together crumbling limestone, dispersed lime to inject behind stone flakes, and more conventional lime mortars to bridge voids and point open joints. This was all done working closely with Kelley Christ, the cathedral's architect.

Kevin Haywood, consultant geologist, and Jackie Hall, archaeologist, worked alongside us. Cleaning revealed the types of stones originally present, including Caen, Reigate, Taynton and - most interestingly - the bowl to the adjacent stoup was found to be of Tournai marble - a rare surviving in situ of this stone in London. We looked closely at the mortars used as well, extracting sands to help us understand and characterise different phases of work - revealing bits of broken Roman bricks in the core mortars.

The London Bridge connection? Well, the building of Rennie's bridge in the 1820s instigated a major restoration programme to the old church, with the nave eventually being rebuilt in 1839-40. It was at that time that much of the medieval fabric was lost, leaving our doorway as a rare survival.

05/03/2021

Sharing a post from Southwell Minster, where we are currently working. All of the work we do seems to be precious, but the Southwell Chapter House carvings are really special and we feel particularly privileged to be involved here.

24/02/2021

Television can have a huge impact on heritage, often in unexpected ways. The 2019 series Gentleman Jack, set around Halifax in the 1830s with landowner Anne Lister at centre stage, resulted in many visitors to the area, notably from the States, prior to the pandemic of course. Hopefully it will pick up again once some sort of normality returns. One place to benefit from increased visitors is Old St. Michael's church tower, at Lightcliffe, cared for by the Friends of Friendless Churches. Re-set in the tower is the brass memorial to Ann Walker, Gentleman Jack's companion. It's a typical brass of the 1850s, with red and black inlay and gothic revival writing and decoration. As part of our current survey we need to consider the significance of the legibility of the inscription - currently difficult to read against the corroded brass - against the normal conservation ethic of minimum intervention. Corroded Victorian brasses, usually originally lacquered, often present such dilemmas and each case is of course treated on its merits with due consideration of its cultural values.