Heritage stone and lime repairs:

Easter Hall

Anstruther · 2023

Our role: Specialist masonry sub-contractor
Client: Fife Council (Building Services)
Value: Under £0.5m
Programme: From September 2022
Scope: Stone indents and repairs, lintel and cill repairs, removal of redundant fixings, vegetation removal, lime repointing, burnt sand mastic to windows and doors, turret repairs

Easter Hall on Cunzie Street is a B-listed town hall and library in the centre of Anstruther, built in 1870 in local sandstone with a corbelled turret and stepped gables. Fife Council Building Services appointed us to carry out the external heritage repairs to all four elevations, working from independent scaffolds and a separate scaffold to the turret.

Easter Hall, Cunzie Street, Anstruther — photograph 1

Easter Hall, Cunzie Street, Anstruther — photograph 2

Easter Hall, Cunzie Street, Anstruther — photograph 3

Easter Hall, Cunzie Street, Anstruther — photograph 4

Easter Hall, Cunzie Street, Anstruther — photograph 5

The challenge

Years of weather and earlier repairs had left the sandstone and its joints in mixed condition. Lintels and cills had cracked, individual stones had eroded or failed, and old metal fixings, cable clips and vegetation were damaging the masonry, particularly around the turret and its roof junctions. The seals around the window and door openings had also deteriorated. The specification required traditional lime-based methods, hand tools for cutting out and dressing stone, and no cement. The hall is a working civic building on a public street, so scaffold, storage and deliveries had to be planned around it and its users.

Our solution

Each elevation was surveyed from scaffold, with condition surveys marked up on the elevation drawings. Failed stones were cut out by hand and replaced with new indents of matching natural sandstone, packed with mortar behind to avoid voids, while cracked lintels and cills were repaired in place wherever possible. Redundant metal fixings were removed from the stonework and the sockets made good in coloured lime mortar. Vegetation was cleared from the turret and its roof junctions. Open and eroded joints were raked out by hand and repointed in a natural hydraulic lime and sand mortar, with the original mortar having been analysed by the Scottish Lime Centre to inform the specification. The sand mastic seals around the windows and doors were renewed in burnt sand mastic. A separate scaffold gave safe access to the turret and its high-level repairs. Work was phased elevation by elevation, with the east and south scaffolds followed by the west.