Consultancy
We provide independent expert advice on anything from small developments at individual properties up to multi-million pound urban regeneration schemes.
Our cathedral work in particular involves advisory/supervisory services, but we also carry out such work for a full range of other clients. We can also provide sub-contracted services to architects, engineers, landscape architects and others. In these contexts we have worked with practices such as Land Use Consultants, Stanton Williams, Caroe & Partners, Tuffin Ferraby and Taylor, Heritage Places, Purcell Miller & Tritton, Carden & Godfrey, Giffords, Hockley and Dawson, and Arups.
The Tower of London
The White Tower has been transformed by severeal years of cleaning and conservation work, carried out by Historic Royal Palaces. We carry out a wide range of consultamcy and access work for HRP at the Tower of London.
Oving Lodge
Oving Lodge, near Chichester, is also a Grade II listed building. The owners here applied for listed building consent to remove render from the front of ths house because of damp problems. They were delighted to find that the render hid a pleasant elevation of flint masonry, typical of the local vernacular architecture. Moreover the render had hidden several features which showed that the apparently simple facade actually had quite a complex structural history. They were therefore surprised and disappointed that their application for permission to leave the elevation as it was rather than re-render it was refused by the local planning authority. The owners asked us to look at the property and prepare a report for them. We did this, arguing that the exposed elevation was characterful, displayed evidence for the building's history, and was fully in keeping with the vernacular architecture of the village. We concluded that the application should be allowed. The owners then appealed against the refusal, and we were delighted when they were successful. Our survey and assessment were crucial to the success of the appeal, and were specifically mentioned in the Inspector's report.
- Oving Lodge before the render was removed from the front wall.
- The same elevation with the render removed down to plinth level. It is now evident that all the current windows are replacements of earlier ones in the same locations, each wider but not quite as tall as the sash windows. The flint masonry at the top left corner of the wall also shows that this end of the building was originally only of single storey height, but it was then extended upwards in two stages. The first had a sloping roof to the side wall of the house, and a window to the front. The second stage dispensed with the sloping roof and created a regular, rectangular (but not symmetrical) frontage.
- Detail of the top left corner of the elevation explaining the features exposed once the render had been removed.
- Annotated photograph of the elevation showing the previously hidden features.
- Graham was the Archaeological Consultant on the Tower Environs Scheme from 1999 to its completion in 2004. The entrance and area around the West Gate Shop (seen here) was transformed, as was Tower Hill West just beyond it, while also giving important new insights into the archaeology of the site.
- The Wharf runs along the Thames-side edge of the Tower. Here HRP decided to completely rebuild a cafeteria erected during the 1970s. We were asked to help with gaining the necessary consents (the castle is a Scheduled Monument and World Heritage Site) and manage the tender process for appointing an archaeological unit to carry out any necessary excavations. Here Museum of London Archaeology are recording the site, with a substantial stone wall in the middle of the photograph.
- Detail of the stone wall, with the Outer Curtain Wall and the Well Tower in the background.
- The White Tower has been transformed by severeal years of cleaning and conservation work, carried out by Historic Royal Palaces. We carry out a wide range of consultamcy and access work for HRP at the Tower of London.
