August 2024

High Summer on a project in Orkney meant very long light filled evenings to extend into, in order to complete the time-limited investigations of the Historic Longhope Lifeboat Station. The tidal range was significant, so accessing timbers at the very foot of the ramp necessitated a seaweed scramble back and forth

 

Some interesting historic building projects in the month included Headley Court where Prof. Archie McIndoe pioneered his plastic surgery techniques at the beginning of WWII. The ‘Guinea Pigs’. Headley Court only ceased being the Armed Forces rehabilitation centre in 2018

 

In Wales, St Fagan’s Castle in Cardiff required a comprehensive risk management investigation which extended to the historic glass houses. St Fagan’s is actually a large Elizabethan house

 

Monk’s House in Lewes is in the custodianship of the National Trust and H+R undertook a Building Pathology investigation focussed on the internal environment. The house was a centre for the Bloomsbury Group, a group of associated British writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists in the early 20th century. Among the people involved in the group were Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster, Vanessa Bell, and Lytton Strachey

 

Other projects of particular interest included the Mansion House in the City and post-fire work at Somerset House