Eastern Office Year Review 2023
H+R’s Eastern Office in Newark, staffed by David Watt and Katie McAndrew, has been kept busy over the past months with surveys, project work, contract administration and consultancy.
One highlight early in the year was being appointed to prepare a conservation management plan for the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School in London. The building has a fascinating history and houses important archive and library collections on Marxism, the history of socialism and the working-class movement as well as related subjects including trade unionism, peace and solidarity movements and the Spanish Civil War.
David has continued his working relationship with English Heritage and is delighted that work will soon be starting at Weeting Castle in Norfolk, where delicate flintwork repairs and consolidation will be undertaken to preserve this twelfth-century fortified manor house. Other English Heritage work has included structural repair of a collapsed section of wall at Chichele College in Heigham Ferrers and repairs to a retaining wall at North Elmham Chapel, preparation of repair documentation for conservation work at Bury St Edmunds Abbey, repairs at Row 111 House in Great Yarmouth and surveys at Brodsworth Hall.
H+R has worked with The National Trust for many years, and this year the Eastern Office has carried out surveys at Belton House, Blickling Hall, Gunby Hall and Monksthorpe Chapel.
Other work over past months has included contract administration for the repair of a fine crinkle-crankle wall in Fakenham, timber surveys at Lincoln Cathedral’s Wren Library, expert witness services, defect investigations, quinquennial inspections and pre-purchase surveys.
A growing area of our work has been with planned preventive maintenance including baseline condition surveys, scheduling of prioritised maintenance and repair tasks, and cost information.
Almost 25 years since it was first published, David has been working on a revised third edition of Building Pathology: Principles and Practice which will be published by Wiley next year.
David was appointed as a Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Technology, Design and Environment at Oxford Brookes University. In this role David will be working with the School of the Built Environment in areas of professional practice and research relating to building pathology.
Katie continues to support David and other H+R surveyors around the country undertaking condition surveys, defect investigations and assessment of historic building fabric. Her main area of work has, however, been in historic building consultancy where her remit has included undertaking building recording (levels 2 and 3) to satisfy recording conditions associated with planning permission and/or listed building consent and producing statements of significance and heritage statements to aid schemes of works to listed buildings and applications for listed building consent.
Working as part of interdisciplinary teams, Katie has been involved in projects ranging from modernisation of barn conversions in Hampshire, alterations to Georgian property in Mayfair, conversion of a former public house in Essex and refurbishment and extension of post-medieval timber-frame dwellings in Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire. To date Katie maintains an unblemished record in securing listed building consent for her clients and guiding them through project development and the planning process to achieve successful outcomes.
In the last year Katie also become a committee member on the IHBC’s East Anglian branch.
