Conservation, Restoration and Life in a 15th Century Wealden Hall House
SmartWell Manor - Part II: getting settled
Hello again!
Today we’re going to continue with our brief look at how we spent our first year in our new home. In our first instalment we gave you a quick overview of what we will be covering over the next few weeks and months, and a little insight into how we spent our first week; so if you missed it why not take a look, using the related post links at the bottom of the page.
If you’re joining us again, you’ll remember we finished with our glorious floorboard discovery and so we decided to use this room for our guests. It will be a little while before we can start to collect some lovely period furniture (install a slightly more attractive radiator and change those curtains), but it wasn’t a bad start. What do you think?
Next on the agenda was my temporary studio (more on the grand plans for my dream art and conservation studio in later posts). I chose one of the other bedrooms, which already had some built-in storage and a lovely view of the garden, and got to work.
With some ingenious (if I do say so myself) repurposing of a few packing boxes and old CD racks, I was finally able to get all my art materials and tools out, in one place, for the first time in years! It’s not a huge space but what it lacks in size it certainly makes up for in charm and character, and has become my very own little indoor sanctuary. Below are a couple of snaps of the newly sorted space and the studio in action.
Once we’d got our guest room and my work space set up, we moved onto some of the others areas of the house (notice how we focused on the comfort of our guests before our own, yeah, we’re lovely like that!). And so it was on to, the mighty task of, the rest of the unpacking, starting with two of the most important luxuries in my life; books and Gin!
And of course making sure the, then two, men of the house (BF - Before Loki), were happy and settled!
Finally for today, let’s take a look at the beginnings of the first conservation project I undertook at SmartWell.
*Now I’m not really a fan of ‘disclaimers’ but in the spirit of minimising potential future confusion on the subject, the following information is important to remember:
It should be noted early on that I (Gemma) am an experienced conservation and heritage professional and, as such, in a very fortunate position when it comes to understanding what is required and appropriate to look after, preserve, and restore our lovely home. Everything you will read about in our posts will have only been undertaken after my own extensive research, and/or after taking advice from my wide circle of conservation professional friends and colleagues.
If you own a listed building, it is always a good idea to get professional advice before carrying out any work. While not all work to a listed building requires listed building consent and planning permission, it is always a good idea to check before you dive in. Historic England has a great guidance booklet for owners of listed buildings, which can be accessed here. In addition to this, I would suggest the best place to start is your local authority and/or Historic England in general; the HE website is full of wonderful, helpful, and easy to understand advice, for all types of heritage care.
Furthermore, for owners of listed buildings, I cannot recommend the LPOC (Listed Property Owners Club) enough; they are incredibly helpful, having a wealth of knowledge and expertise. They are always on hand to help with excellent advice, and have worked tirelessly to improve listed building legislation, and the move towards a sustainable future for our built heritage here in the UK.
If you do have any queries about how to care for, maintain, or plan for more extensive work to historic buildings, please don’t hesitate to contact us at info@smartdecarts.com
Okay, back to the fun stuff! Where was I?! Ah yes, our first throws of conservation at SmartWell.
This project is actually a rather complex one, so think of this as an introduction to a more detailed, dedicated post, which will follow on later (a taster, an amuse bouche as it were, to wet your appetite for further conservation posts, if you’re so inclined).
Our lovely historic home is fit to burst with amazing original features; however, it has also been subjected to some rather ghastly interventions and additions. One of these grizzly gruesome tales is that of the inappropriate modern surface coating (think paints, varnishes, stains). So in this first conservation foray we will tackle ‘the case of the film forming paint’; one of the true crime, horror stories of many a historic house. Our wonky wonder has been soaked, splashed, and slapped with a myriad of these lethal layers, murderous membranes, and cruel coatings, many of which could cause some deadly damage and deterioration.
When a modern film forming paint is applied to the fabric of a historic building, moisture can become trapped in the traditional materials used in its construction. These materials, (think: lime based plasters, renders and mortars, early brick, natural stone and even cob), are often referred to as ‘breathable’ (now this doesn't mean that they have lungs or are a good choice for the gym), it means that they are to one degree or another permeable (meaning they allow for the passage of air and/or moisture). If you block this permeability, moisture can become trapped within these materials, causing problems such as damp, mould, the migration of soluble salts, and the potential loss of structural integrity.
So what can be done? Well, if at all possible, it is best to remove these coatings. However, as with anything related to heritage and conservation, this needs to be done with the upmost care and with professional guidance. Luckily in our case, that professional is me (Gemma Smart - smART Decorative Arts Senior Heritage Consultant). If you have taken a look at our website you may already know that this is one of my specialities. (You could say, and it has been said before, I am the number one stripper in town! Honestly, I’ve stripped in palaces and castles, livery and banqueting halls, private houses and country estates, I’ve even done it in a church!)
While I was unpacking, sorting, cleaning, and setting up my studio and gin cabinet, John was removing a dated and less-than significant 1980s shelving unit from our dining room. The wall behind this unit is now constructed of under-building brickwork; a technique of infilling previous timber framed and plaster walls that was very common in the victorian period, which is when this intervention was likely to have taken place. The lovely old brickwork (wonky yes, but we love that!) has, as you can see in the picture below, been subjected to a fair few coats of paint. The top coat is most definitely one of those pesky, non-permeable, pains-in-the rear we mentioned earlier.
Our main goal here was to remove this most recent perilous paint layer, in order to investigate what lay beneath (in my expert opinion, highly likely NOT to be Michelle Pfeiffer). To begin with I would usually remove a very small area of the decorative surface, layer by layer, until I reach the substrate (the substrate is the surface created from those traditional materials we were talking about earlier). This technique is known in the conservation world as uncovering or revealing, which allows us to make an initial visual assessment of the decorative schemes. The technique of uncovering is carried out using a scalpel and preferably an optivisor (magnification headset, which makes one look seriously cool! Think Sigourney Weaver in Ghostbusters, when she’s working on that big ass painting that comes to life). Now, it is vital that this is done with the upmost care (I know I’ve said this before and I’m banging on about it, but it really is that important!). Needless to say, scalpels are extremely sharp and can easily cause damage to both your surfaces and you.
*Uncovering or revealing is usually a pre-curser for more in-depth research using paint analysis, often referred to as architectural paint research; however, we will talk more about this in later posts, otherwise we’ll be here all blinkin day!).
In this particular case, as I removed all those cobwebs, dust, and dirt debris, a rather large amount of paint also flaked off (a. not surprising after all that inappropriate paint, b. lucky thing my hoover was wearing my tights aye!). Let’s take a look at what I found.
The picture to the left (first image if you’re on a mobile) is an area where the paint was flaking, in some places it was flaking back to the brick and lime mortar, in others the top few layers were flaking to reveal the remnants of some far more interesting historic schemes.
The picture to the right (second image if you’re on a mobile) shows two areas of colour to the top right and bottom left of the image. Even to the naked eye these gorgeous glimpse of the past are clearly visible. When viewed via my magnification specs, I could spot what appeared to be a coat or two of discoloured whites and/or creams, a blue/grey and a yellow scheme. These paint layers could be early Victorian lime wash, or perhaps an early ‘oil bound distemper’ or ‘water-paint’, the precursor to the ‘matt emulsion’ we know today. More research would be required, but what we did know is that as far as possible we wanted to retain these lovely historic paint layers.
If you want to learn more about historic paint, I highly recommend you do a search for Patrick Baty, what he doesn't know about paint in general is probably not worth knowing!
There’s a lot more to this story and at the time of writing it’s still not finished yet, so as you can imagine, it will need at least a post all of its own, probably a few! But we hope this first instalment has sparked your interest, and if so we will let you know as soon as the full story is on its way.
Thanks so much for joining us today. In our penultimate instalment we’ll be taking a trip into the SmartWell Gardens and reminiscing about a few celebratory moments from the past year. We do hope you will join us.
Have a lovely day folks, take care, and stay safe.
