Spalding War Memorial, Ayscoughfee Hall Gardens, Lincolnshire Skillingtons have completed the specialist conservation of a Sir Edwin Lutyens designed First World War memorial in Spalding in time for Remembrance Day. Having suffered from pooling water, damp issues and deteriorating stonework, Skillingtons were engaged to carry out a five-month programme of repair and careful restoration to this structure, originally completed in 1922. The work involved addressing issues to the stonework, roof tiles, ceiling, flooring, as well as recutting and repainting the lettering, and regilding the crowns atop the carved stone flags. A lot of effort went into matching materials to those used originally, and to ensuring the structural as well as aesthetic integrity of the monument. The project was funded by the memorial’s custodian, South Holland District Council.
Emma Teale, Senior Conservator, writes: Skillingtons were first asked in 2022 by the Woodland Trust to have a look at graffiti removal and brick repair at a WW2 firing wall in Alma Park Wood, part of Londonthorpe Woods, Grantham. This is a slightly unusual and interesting job for Skillington Workshop as it is 20th century war time brickwork. The wall consists of curved wall with a central bay, the site of the butts or backstop that takes the impact after the bullet has passed through the target. You can still see miss-aimed bullet holes peppering the central bay, and some of the bolts that used to hang metal sheets used to protect the lower brickwork. The brick walls had been covered in lots of different spray paint graffiti, and any cleaning trials had to take into consideration the difficult logistics of getting materials and equipment to site. All of the brick wall heads had vegetation growing out of them and the soldier course of capping had degraded in places and had led to losses of the brickwork below. The right hand wall of the […]
