CULTURAL & HISTORICAL BUILDINGS RESTORING A Gary Walters, Managing Director of stone and porcelain specialist Stone A
For over 30 years, we have supplied stone products for architectural and interiors use, ranging from flooring for the home to one-off bespoke elements. From black granites to white marble, warm limestones to brown, blue and green-grey hues, we have an eclectic array of stone with several different finishes, from modern to antiqued.
From our Hemel Hempstead headquarters and showrooms in Bristol and London, we have worked on a huge number of prolific projects. These include installing chocolate Morena marble plinths in the V&A museum in Kensington, London, laying a Pietra Laro beige sandstone floor in Norwich Cathedral, installing an Italian basalt floor in the incredible Natural History Museum and supporting a number of award-winning installations at the Chelsea Flower Show each year.
My advice to an architect or designer who is working on a project in a cultural or historical location is to get your stone expert involved as early as possible in the process. Remember, advice is free if you know where to go, so make the most of experiencing those you want to work with. We will know what will, and won’t work and this will avoid you going through a whole process ; designing an area that is approved by the client, only
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Chelsea Flower Show © Stone Age to discover your vision can’t be created.
There are a number of key things to bear in mind when designing the flooring for a historical location.
A Seamless Addition
The most important thing to consider is the fact that you are installing something that needs to look like it’s always been there. You are essentially creating the natural fabric of the building. You can’t put modern flooring in a 16th century building; it’s got to blend in.
You need to source materials that are very similar to what was used originally. Do your research. For example, did they source the material from a local quarry that was easy to travel from and can you do that again? If you take a cathedral in Yorkshire that was built in the 15th century, you’re not going to build it from Portland limestone from the bottom of the country, you’re going to source it from areas local to them, so York stone or sandstone quarries.
But, of course, over the years, these quarries are not in as much demand as they used to be and/or beds change so they close. We have noticed that there has been a surge over the past 10 years of people wanting British materials and we
have excellent contacts with companies in the UK who specialise in UK materials with a good source palette for those who want to restore. Most historical and cultural building organisations aim to support local businesses, right up and down the chain, from local architects to interior designers to suppliers so bear this in mind.
Changing the flooring is much more difficult than anything. When designing the interiors of a location, remember that the furniture can change but the flooring can’t so it’s essential you get this spot on. It must match and complement the fabric of the building.
The Seal of Approval
When it comes to a listed building, you need to remember that most of the materials and approval will go to a board. While it is a long process, it will be worth it.
Natural Variations
When the original flagstone floors were made, there were variations in colour. This isn’t a design aesthetic thing but because the quarry would take two days to create one paving stone and, often by the time they had finished, it was a different colour. So, look at a really old flagstone floor and model
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