Issue 40 winter 23 web - Flipbook - Page 81
Preserving the decorative
plaster and stonework at
Salisbury Museum
Berenice Humphreys, Senior Projects Manager, Cliveden Conservation, talks about the
conservation work carried out to preserve the decorative plaster and stonework at Salisbury
Museum.
We first became involved at Salisbury Museum back in
2014, when we carried out some minor repairs to the
ceiling of the King’s Room on behalf of the curator and
Museum Director, Adrian Green. We were therefore
delighted to be asked to return to site as part of this major
scheme of works, helping to preserve decorative plaster
and stonework to the building. We have been working as
specialist contractors for and with the Main Contractor
H. Mealing & Sons.
Two rooms inside the building are of particular note and
required close attention by our plaster repair team – the
King’s Room and the smaller adjacent Abbot’s Chamber.
These hold some of the earliest decorative plaster in the
museum, and whilst the King’s Room was found to be
in relatively good condition, the Abbot’s Chamber had
clearly been of concern over the years and had previously
been heavily repaired.
In the Abbots Chamber roof space, arched braced trussed
timbers gave tantalising glimpses of the original medieval
house, but along with a plethora of heating ducts these
timbers made it a very tight working space above.
As an historic building which has grown in size and
changed in use over the last several hundred years, the
museum presents a number of challenges of material.
Externally, a combination of brick and flint makes up the
walling, and window dressings are in anything from
Chilmark, Ham, oolitic limestone and timber. Internally,
the original features can be seen in many of the rooms,
such as style of windows, decorative plaster, and awkward
twists and turns of staircases and corridors.
We carried out a detailed survey of the ceiling from front
and back, then put together a plan for fixing the ceiling,
supplementing the previous repairs with new fixings to
help support the ceiling plasterwork. Once repairs to the
rear were completed, we filled large and small cracks,
and recreated minor damaged mouldings. The face of
the ceiling was then prepped and redecorated.
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Conservation & Heritage Journal
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