The Worshipfull Company of Skinners Great Hall Ceiling Repair and re-enforcement

The Honourable Company of Skinners Great Hall Ceiling Repair and re-enforcement.

Skinners Hall, a Grade 1 Listed building located in the heart of London. An awe inspiring place filled to the brim with history and built on the historic foundations of London. The privilege to attend such an important building never mind being invited to work on the fabric, is one of the highlights of my career.
Re-built in 1668 just after the great fire of London with the remains of the original hall which burnt down in the great fire resting under the Courtroom.

The great hall ceiling vaults over 15 meters high, 30 meters long and 15meters wide. Constructed in 1904 it is a 'rag and stick' ornamental suspended ceiling.

Due to the age of the ceiling the fibres within the hessian or 'rag' were starting to deteriorate causing cracks and some sagging of the ornamentation.
JP Construction were instructed to give the ceiling an extension of life as The Company of Skinners move towards their 700 year anniversary.

As with all our restoration projects we assess the existing construction along with the materials used and techniques employed when it was first constructed and strive to use only like for like materials to ensure maximum compatibility to the existing substrate.
To continue and improve on the traditional rag and stick method, we had to clean the last 100 years of dust and dirt from the top side of the ceiling, re-enforce the lath ribs and re-hang the ceiling using our own rag and stick method re-enforced with hessian dipped in fine casting plaster giving the ceiling a lease of life.

The reproduction of the lost ornamentation section had to be carried out very slowly as most of the pieces that collapsed completely disintegrated as it fell meaning we had to use bits and pieces to make our initial mould.
Using fine casting plaster we cast from our new mould a repeat, to piece together the 'run' as would have been done originally, for the shoulders we utilised our newly fabricated running horse and ran the lengths on site before securing into place.
There were numerous free hand repairs to holes, cracks , flowers and of course the ornamentation.
The result was excellent, not only was the ceiling ready to continue its life but the repairs cannot be distinguished from the original ceiling.
Another project successfully completed to the highest of standards.

All methodologies used were instructed and checked by our IHBC surveyor HBA.

If you have a project like this that needs restoration or maintenance then please get in touch using the links.