Sixteenth-Century Tower House, Ayrshire | Restoration Case Study

Our role: Main contractor
Client: Private client
Value: £1m to £1.5m
Programme: Approximately 12 months, 2015 to 2016
Scope: Tower house alterations, new chapel and cloister link in dressed stone, lime harling, slating and leadwork

A sixteenth-century tower house in rural Ayrshire was altered and extended to create a new family chapel, a cloistered link and additional accommodation. As main contractor we carried out the whole of the works, from downtakings and foundations through to dressed stonework, lime harling, slating and leadwork. The new chapel was the largest single element of the contract.

The challenge

The new buildings had to sit naturally beside a historic tower, which meant hundreds of individually shaped stones, curved work around the chapel apse, and carved features designed and detailed as the job progressed. At the same time the tower itself needed a new roof, larger dormers and fresh lime harling.

Our solution

Around 1,290 dressed stones, roughly 85 cubic metres, were scheduled one by one, then templated, dressed and built on site by our masons. They included curved and straight plinths, buttresses with caps and finials, a curved string course to the apse, pointed-arch openings with springers, voussoirs and keystones, moulded mullions, crow-stepped gables and a carved Celtic cross. The new walls are stone-faced cavity construction. On the tower we stripped and re-sarked the roof, formed new dormers, re-slated with salvaged slate to match the existing, and renewed the leadwork. Around 520 square metres of three-coat lime harling (1:1:5 scrub coat, 1:2 straightening coat, 1:2:5 finishing coat) went on externally, with mineral paint over, and around 560 square metres of three-coat lime plaster inside.

Outcomes

New chapel in dressed stone

A new chapel with a curved apse, buttresses, finials, crow-stepped gables and a carved Celtic cross.

Stone cut on site

Around 1,290 individually scheduled stones templated, dressed and built by our own masons.

Tower house renewed

New roof, dormers, salvaged slate, leadwork and traditional three-coat lime harling.

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Sixteenth-Century Tower House