St Lawrence

An extension roof and facade replacement in the delightful town of Ashburton.

The old slate roof was replaced with man-made tiles at some point in the 70's and subsequently began to fail 50 years on.
We recommended a slate from North America (Canada) named Glendyne, which is a perfect choice for heritage sites and conservation areas.

'Glendyne slate composition is 98% identical to Welsh slate and is also a suitable match for the Ffestiniog (Welsh Grey).'

We have installed a lead ridge and cloak detail with our cast lead Phoenix motif. We also fabricated and welded some bat access vents into the ridge, to provide safe passage for bats into roosting areas in the loft and roof voids, whilst maintaining the watertight seal on the roof.

The second phase of this project was to remove the existing hung man-made tile facade and replace with the same slate used on the roof.

Our clients were aware of how creative we like to get and therefore requested some designs be incorporated. The designs included a teasel (Teasels were used to 'tease' woollen cloth to improve its texture), the Church of St Andrew, a sun and moon (representing the copper and tin mining industries).

All designs were taken from the Ashburton Town Crest, our clients are extremely passionate about the town’s history. They wanted something to admire whilst relaxing in their garden area.

We drew out various designs, in all areas possible for our client’s consideration. After some deliberation our clients decided on the sun and moon in the style of that within the town crest.

We unearthed many horrors whilst carrying out the removal process, the door and windows had perished along with the structure within being a patchwork of small and poorly executed repairs. This ultimately left us with little to no choice but to remove almost everything, other than the original 16th century ship timbers of course.

We got to work strengthening the timbers with new, including a solid lintel that replaced the four pieces that were not functioning and compressing the door and window frames. We need to carve seated compound cuts that purchased the wonky but wonderful original framework, I mean seriously old logs. We then insulated the cavities and clad over with sheet timber; this was to pull everything together and create a solid substrate. We then installed counter batten to provide some ventilation space and installed breather membrane and batten to facilitate the next stage.

Lead trays were fabricated to the door and window reveals prior to the new joinery being installed. The joinery was completed to the exact dimensions and appearance as the original ones. After this was installed, we used our skills to cover the facade with natural slate, including the designs.

The pillars between the windows and door were to be trimmed with painted timber, we discussed with our clients the higher maintenance and bland aesthetic in using this design. A decision was made to carry on the slate theme, in doing so we were able to add a little artisanal touch by cutting slate in a way that would interpret that of a moon cycle, thus keeping with the main designs.

We are very pleased with how it all turned out, please have a look through the project gallery to see what we were able to achieve on this project.