From a court to The Court

It is lovely to be the bearer of good news, and this week was a stand out week for us, as the very first bricks of the rebuild proper were laid. Nigel and I donned hi-viz, hard hats and steel-capped boots to inspect the work undertaken so far. I found it quite moving to see the starting points; the front door frame being rebuilt with precisely hand-cut Cheshire red bricks. Our son messaged ‘100 bricks laid, just 100,000 more to go!’ when he saw the photographs.

To the right of the main front door, matching old brickwork and new

New door entrance. Modern bricks carefully hand shaped to fit against brickwork damaged in the fire. Ultimately this will all be plastered over, but the brickwork underneath will be imressive!

The work area at attic level. Note our rare horizontal chimney to the right of the picture

Our specialist builders, Midland Conservation Ltd have built an internal scaffolding structure, allowing them access to the top of damaged walls to replace window and door lintels. There are wooden scaffold floors inside now, placed a little lower than the original floor heights, allowing the builders access to make repairs. Its is like a little city up there, with signs of the builders’ labour left over the weekend; a wheelbarrow propped by the guttering, the odd hoody hung on a nail that once carried part of the roof.

Work in the first floor bedrooms. This is one of the bow windows seen from the south elevation.

There’s been a bit of experimentation too. The walls on the southern elevation partially collapsed during the fire (this was the location of the heart of the fire back in August 2019), and a section of the first-floor wall was electively demolished during the first phase of work as it was very unsafe (it took little more than a hand-push from our demolition experts to unseat the top half!). Obviously, the builders want to make the repairs as close in appearance to the original wall, so they have been making test walls, using different coloured bricks, and various mortar mixes. Something I’ve never considered was how easy a particular mortar is to work, as one example was a good colour match but so messy and difficult to work with, it looked terrible. The builders are doing their best to come up with an acceptable palette of materials, which will then be vetted as to its suitability by the appropriate conservation agencies.

One of the test walls. Close match, colourwise, but this mortar is difficult and messy to use

A mixture of old and new bricks, and a sandier coloured mortar

Being allowed up onto the scaffolding to view the ruins is a revelation. Hitherto forgotten bricked up doors and windows have come to light. A surprising amount of olden days cowboy workmanship has come to light too, obscured for centuries by plaster and lathe. A builder friend visited on Saturday, and we gave him the six-penny tour. He pointed out that people often praise craftsmanship of a bygone era as if it were all good. He then pointed into two abutting walls that had not been ‘tied in’. Some 18^th century builder had been in a hurry to get to the pub!

Top of the bow of the windows

We’ve also discovered that the matching two-storey bays at the front of the house were not built by the same people. Well, we have assumed this as the building styles are so markedly dissimilar, not only in quality of materials and workmanship, but also specifications. Yet they have presented a united front, in appearance anyway, for over two-hundred years to anyone viewing them from the lawn. We can only speculate as to how this arose. Perhaps a shoddy builder was replaced by a more conscientious one? Or alternatively, a more thorough contractor was replaced with a cheaper builder happy to take short cuts? Ultimately, the building stood robustly for three-hundred years, and however mis-matched some of the historic workmanship is, enough survived a horrendous fire to allow us to rebuild Betley Court at all!

Beeston Reclamation Yard - a fascinating place full of wonderful architectural salvage

Nigel and I were out at Beeston over the weekend. We’ve been looking for a new main front door to replace the one destroyed on 23^rd August 2019. The previous door was massive – a mighty 46” wide, and over 8 foot tall. We’ve considered getting a new one made, but if we could find one in a reclamation yard, that would be better. The only trouble is we are looking for a second-hand door that has been removed from quite a grand building, possibly listed/high status, but not a building that has been destroyed by fire. We thought the chances were quite remote, to be honest.

Deep inside a lockup. What have we found?

We enquired at Beeston Reclamation Yard, and they led us to a lockup to show us some massive oak doors. Apparently, they’d come out of Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff’s house during building work. They weren’t quite right (although they will look stunning in someone’s house!). We were shown to another lockup, where they’d recently taken delivery of doors removed during the refurb of Oldham Town Hall. The first one had a glass hatch, so not quite suitable, but the second one, from ‘Court Room No 2’ had six panels and was very thick and heavy, and showed no sign of warping.

The door from Courtroom 2, Oldham Town Hall

Nigel messaged the architect to check if it would do, and after he got the nod, we bought it. Somehow, we got this huge door in the car and got it back to Betley Court.

Bit of a tight squeeze!

It’ll be a while before we can install it, but I think Prof Brown would have enjoyed the idea of a door coming from ‘a court’ to ‘the Court’

All best wishes

Ladybird Su