Sandstone repair and crane-lifted stone:

Ayr Sheriff Court

Ayr · 2026

Our role: Specialist stone repair subcontractor
Client: Scottish Courts & Tribunals Service (via OCS Group)
Value: Under £0.5m
Programme: From December 2025
Scope: Replacement and indented sandstone, balustrade and baluster rebuilding, cornice and pediment repair, removal of redundant fixings, lime repointing, leadwork

Ayr Sheriff Court stands on Wellington Square and remains a fully operational court throughout our works. Scottish Courts & Tribunals Service commissioned a programme of remedial stonework to the front elevation, much of it to correct failed earlier repairs, and we were appointed as stone repair subcontractor to the main contractor, OCS Group. The works are in progress and cover the balustrade, cornice, pediment and portico.

Ayr Sheriff Court: drone footage of the live works

Ayr Sheriff Court, Wellington Square, Ayr — photograph 1

Ayr Sheriff Court, Wellington Square, Ayr — photograph 2

Ayr Sheriff Court, Wellington Square, Ayr — photograph 3

Ayr Sheriff Court, Wellington Square, Ayr — photograph 4

Ayr Sheriff Court, Wellington Square, Ayr — photograph 5

Ayr Sheriff Court, Wellington Square, Ayr — photograph 6

The challenge

Much of the elevation had been repaired before, and several of those repairs were failing. Slender indents and glued-in stones had come away, corroded scaffold and bird-net fixings had star-cracked the stone around them, and weathering had attacked the exposed arrises of the cornice and the balustrade rail. Balusters were eroded and cracked, and some units were hollow behind their face. Replacement stone is heavy and has to be landed at height on a scaffold, over a public square, beside a court that stays open, so every lift needs careful planning and control.

Our solution

We began with a high-level inspection from a truck-mounted boom, tap testing and measuring defective units. Replacement stone follows the petrographic analysis and is submitted to the design team for approval before use. Defective balusters are cut out and indented with new stone, pinned with stainless steel dowels and rebuilt in lime mortar, and weathered cope and rail stones are replaced to match. Earlier slender indents are taken down and rebuilt with stainless steel fixings, and redundant scaffold and bird-net fixings are removed and the holes plugged. Open joints are raked out, packed and repointed in lime. The heaviest elements are installed by crane in planned weekend lifts. Each lift is governed by a written methodology: a single lift in the air at a time, one clear line of lift coordination, an exclusion zone around the crane, and no unfixed stones left stacked on the scaffold. Stone weights are checked against crane capacity and scaffold loading limits before each lift, and the court's operating hours are respected.