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By
Sharon S. Kessler
Harlaxton College Web Design Student
Thursday, February 28, 2008
After nearly 2½ years of research, fundraising and some last-minute negotiation with English Heritage, college officials signed contracts Friday to proceed with the renovation of Harlaxton Manor’s gatehouse.
Skillington Workshop of Grantham was chosen from among five bidders to act as the oversight contractor on the project. Work will begin soon, and the gatehouse will reopen with two flats in it by the summer of 2009.
“We will see scaffolds go up by March 17,” said Suzanne Kingsley, who has spearheaded the planning and fundraising for the $800,000 project. “Physical work to the roof, the stonework, the walls, the interior repair of the plaster and the floors, and so on, is on a six-month time frame.”
Some utility work on the project began about 18 months ago but came to a halt when there was a delay in finalizing detailed specifications for the project. With the specifications complete and the contracts signed, a contractor worked Saturday to extend water and electricity lines to the gatehouse.
Skillington Workshop, which has just finished repairs to the plaster in the Long Gallery ceiling, will oversee repairing the gatehouse and the wing walls, reworking the massive gate so it can close again and turning the derelict interior into two nice flats.
“It’s a new general contractor for us,” Kingsley said of Skillington and the firm’s owner David Carrington. “He’s quite a well-known restoration contractor in plasterwork and stonework, so we’re excited to work with him on this project. But this is his first English Heritage project, so I am sure the oversight will be very close.”
English Heritage, which had put the gatehouse on its “Buildings at Risk Register,” has promised a grant of £150,000 ($300,000) for the project, but that promise comes with conditions.
“They require you to do certain things in putting the building back as it was,” Kingsley said. And the money will be released to the college only as the work is completed to English Heritage’s specifications.
That means the gatehouse must be restored, as closely as possible, to how it would have looked when Gregory Gregory had it built in the 1830s – lead roof, lime-and-hair plaster and all. And as much of the existing original material as possible must be reused, which is why specialized contractors are needed.
“There’s always the tension between current building regulations and how you’d like to use it,” Kingsley said. “There’s a process of conversation with them (English Heritage).”
That “conversation” continued right up until the contracts were signed, she said. The preservation group is strict in keeping historic buildings intact, and it’s not shy about withholding grant monies if a project doesn’t follow the approved plan.
English Heritage gets about three-quarters of its funding from the U.K. government and one-quarter from income on its properties, and it has three broad goals: to “conserve and enhance the historic environment, broaden public access to heritage and increase people’s understanding of the past.” To accomplish those goals, among other things, it awards “grants for the conservation of historic buildings, monuments and landscapes,” it says on its Web site.
The preservation group’s interest in Harlaxton Manor probably lies in the building’s uniqueness. British Studies Professor Edward Bujak describes the style as Tudor-Gothic, which is a uniquely English style, combining the quintessential, solid English Tudor with the romance and daring of the Gothic. “It’s a blend of styles not found elsewhere,” he said.
“Gregory Gregory was a pioneer of blending these styles. This manor might be the first of its kind,” he said Wednesday in a lecture on the building and its place in English history and culture.
In addition to the English Heritage grant, the project will be completed with a $500,000 gift from Sharon and Burkley McCarthy. Sharon McCarthy, who is a trustee of the University of Evansville, made her gift as a part of the university’s current capital campaign.
Kingsley describes it as “very fortunate” that McCarthy made the gift just as English Heritage was considering the college’s grant application. Having money committed to the project helped solidify the preservation group’s interest in supporting the project.
Now the fun begins. Kingsley said that like the manor, its other buildings and gardens, not a lot of documentation exists for the gatehouse, which is also known as the halfway house. There has been some detective work and conjecture in determining how the flats were used. Almost certainly, she said, the gatehouse was designed by Gregory’s first architect, Anthony Salvin. Beyond that, not a lot is known about the building.
“It is very interesting when you look in it,” she said. “It has two separate flats. Whether or not the original purpose was that people lived in them, we don’t know.”
“You normally would have had a servant, maybe two, living in them, as a lodge keeper,” she said. “The gates would have been shut. … There’s a little tower area where there probably was a bell, so that if someone came, they would ring the bell. And there would be a person there to let you in.”
Kingsley said she finds it interesting that the flats are quite different, with one having pretty elaborate woodwork and a big fireplace on the ground floor level. Each flat has a basement and a couple rooms above. The area that stretches above the driveway is divided laterally, with the smaller flat having a room that looks toward the manor and the other with a room that looks down the long drive toward the highway.
Despite the views, living there probably wasn’t easy or convenient, Kingsley said. “It had no electrical or other kind of utilities. There were little outhouses in the courtyards, and there had been a water tank and some water sort of piped in to the house on one side.” And the heat, she said, was provided by the fireplaces.
English Heritage will allow the installation of electricity, plumbing and heating and appropriate bathrooms and kitchens, she said. But the fireplaces must be put back in working order, too.
The attention to detail comes at a high price. For instance, the repair of the wing walls alone is estimated to cost £70,000 ($140,000). As much as possible, the original stone will be reused, and in the end, the wall will look much like it did before, only much sturdier.
“Things are incredibly expensive,” Kingsley said. “It’s more than you can think about.” She said it makes the fundraising difficult, because she must explain to American donors that a generous gift of $500,000 is halved when converted to pounds, and then there is the fact that things just cost more here.
“We will spend around £50,000 getting water and electricity to the building, and those are the fees … for the hookups.” That is why she says the $800,000 in gifts “very nearly will do the project … but not quite.”
She said a big difference is in how projects using public monies are planned here. The project cost-estimate is based on “what you hope it will cost,” she said with a laugh. After you obtain funding, then you put the project out for bids, which can be, well, alarming.
In the States, the bids from contractors would come before the fundraising appeal, and cost escalations would be factored in for delays. But Kingsley is not complaining -- she’s just eager to get the project rolling.
“It’s been a very interesting project, because you learn how the English funding system works,” she said of her extensive and unpaid work on the project. “English Heritage is a wonderful body that is entirely a grant-making body to save these buildings, and we have found it to be very positive working with them.”
And how will the flats be used? That’s the $800,000 question.
“The idea has been that one side would be rented out, maybe to a staff member, all the time,” she said. “And the other side would be used for guest housing, but for maybe longer-term stays.”
For instance, a U.S. professor on sabbatical could rent the flat for a stay of several months, instead of renting it for short-term stays.
But there are other ideas and options, including using the flats as rentals for vacationers not associated with the university. That would open the college to a host of hotel regulations that it now avoids by allowing only college-related guests to stay in its rooms.
For now, who will occupy the flats and how to furnish them are questions to be resolved later. Before then, much work looms.
An optimistic timeline would have the flats ready for occupancy by mid-spring 2009, but more likely, they will be ready that summer, she said.
And when that is done?
Kingsley, who describes herself as never knowing when to stop, says there is always another project waiting in the wings.
“English Heritage has approached us again to apply for grant aid for repair of the Lion Terrace.”
She stops, chuckles and says, “That project could easily take care of £400,000.”
Word on that grant from English Heritage could be forthcoming in a month or so. Beyond that, the group wants to conduct a “condition survey” of all the other structures on the property to detail what needs repair and to give a broad cost estimate.
“None of us will want to see the bottom line number on that,” she said. “But it’s fascinating.”
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The cost of repairing both flanks of the wall as part of the renovation project is about $140,000, says Suzanne Kingsley, who has coordinated the project.
The gatehouse design is likely the work of Gregory Gregory's first architect Anthony Salvin. Little is known about how it was used, but at some point in its history it housed people in two flats. Those flats will be restored as part of the project.
This photo is of one of the gatehouse rooms that extend over the driveway. Expect to see scaffolding erected and work begin on the $800,000 renovation project by mid-March, Suzanne Kingsley says.