Bradgate Park: How do you restore a 500-year-old Tudor chapel?
Fixing up a modern building can feel like a daunting enough prospect - but how do you set about restoring a crumbling 500-year-old Tudor chapel?"Very carefully, with a great deal of patience and attention to detail," says the man leading a £200,000 conservation project in Leicestershire.Accredited conservator and restorer Dr David Carrington has been behind the work to renovate a chapel that forms part of the ruins of Bradgate House - the birthplace of England's Nine Days' Queen Lady Jane Grey.The 60-year-old, who boasts four decades of experience in repairing historic structures, told the BBC there had been challenges since work began in February, but the project was 40% complete with a target finish date of June.
Bradgate Park Trust, which is part-funding the project, said it hoped to start the second phase of repairs to the rest of the Tudor ruins, including the towers, in the summer at a cost of more than £700,000.Much of the 15th Century mansion, within Bradgate Park, in Newtown Linford, has fallen down but efforts are under way to preserve what still stands.This includes the chapel and a 400-year-old monument inside to Henry and Anne Grey, cousins of Lady Jane.
James Dymond, the trust's director, said since Henry's death in 1614 the monument had become damaged over the centuries.It requires extensive cleaning, including lifting the effigy of Anne from the monument to access the internal structure, which Mr Dymond said was "quite a lot of detailed, specialist work".He said significant work would take place to clean and restore a large window in the chapel and replace a metal grill on the outside, which had been damaged and weathered over the years.Mr Dymond said the whole ceiling will also be replaced as it was in a dangerous condition, which would then allow public full access to the chapel.
Dr Carrington, founder and director at Skillington Workshop Ltd which has been contracted to carry out the work, said his team was "very careful" with the monument, which took four weeks to restore."It's made of English alabaster and there are a 100 different pieces built into the core using little iron ties," he said."Over the centuries the iron has rusted and expanded, which then creates cracks in the monument."We have been very careful with the cleaning using hand tools - brushes, cotton wool swabs - as alabaster is such a soft stone."
Dr Carrington said essential safety repairs and restoration work was under way at the chapel including masonry repairs to damaged and loose bricks and the window.Again only hand tools are being used for the delicate work, like chisels, modelling tools, hammers and brushes. "There are incomplete walls that are vulnerable and have been exposed to the weather and we need to secure those," he said."The challenge has been to source like-for-like materials to the brickwork - by size, colour, hardness and mortar."There's no cement involved because that wasn't used back then. It's traditional lime mortar, which is softer than modern mortar. We need to recreate it by using compatible materials."Different sands from different quarries make different mortar. It's trial and error to find the right recipe to make the new brickwork look the same as the old. "It took up to three weeks to get it right and we made over a dozen samples, little biscuits."
Dr Carrington said he was confident the work carried out so far "wasn't obvious" to visitors, adding: "If we've done our job well, it should look like we've never been here."It should look the same as the original and not new and shiny."He added work to the damaged chapel ceiling is due to begin in April due a colony of bats - a legally protected species - in the roof space.
The construction of Bradgate House began in about 1490 and was completed in the early 16th Century. It was the home of the Grey family for nearly 250 years. Lady Jane, a Protestant great-niece of Henry VIII, was born at the Grade II* listed monument in 1537 and became queen on 9 July 1553.She was deposed by her Catholic cousin Mary I nine days later and executed, aged 17, in 1554.The house was abandoned in 1719 following the death of the first Earl of Stamford but stood complete until about 1740 when it fell into ruin. It wasopened to the public in the 1930s.Historic England's heritage at risk surveyor Amanda White said Bradgate House was one of the earliest brick buildings in the county to have been built without defences."It was built on a grand scale and is an important medieval site, which demonstrates the wealth of those at the very highest level of late medieval society," she added.
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On the same boat to Shetland was John Dunmore Lang, a Church of Scotland minister who had become well-known in his adopted Australia and who, as it happened, was in the midst of a tour of Scotland aimed at attracting new blood to the colony. The unmarried and widowed young women in Shetland appeared to both of them as ideal candidates for emigration. It seems they were knocking at an open door: Lady Jane was soon receiving attention from young Shetland women eager to find out if they might be suitable candidates for emigration. As well as poverty and famine, a key problem for Shetland women, found Veronique, was a gaping gender imbalance: the hazardous nature of the islands' men's work – often sailors or fishermen – meant the number of single women and young widows far exceeded the men. Cradle mountain, Tasmania (Image: Public domain - With confidence growing that there was no shortage of Shetland women willing to make the bold move, a philanthropic fund was launched to attract donations from around the country to pay for their passage to Tasmania. A Lerwick committee selected 21 for the first voyage to Tasmania on board the Joseph Soames, leaving from London in mid-August 1850. All but just two – knitter Anne and another woman, Elizabeth Smith, 20, who gave her job as housemaid – were listed as farm servants. They ranged from just 18 years old to the oldest, Henderson Jamieson, aged 31. Some appear to have been related: Helen and Jane Ninianson, aged 21 and 26, Elizabeth and Catherine Smith, 21 and 22, and Catherine and Elizabeth Tait, 28 and 22 seem almost certain to have been sisters. The journey south was long and hard but horror tales of dreadful conditions, violence and even on board rape meant that unlike many other emigrants, the Shetland women were given support of a matron and access to learning materials on board to make the journey more bearable. Their ship arrived at Port Adelaide on 23 November, with all 21 engaged to work with families with 24 hours of their arrival. According to one record, they arrived 'in the highest terms of their fitness, as far as could be ascertained, for the life they are to lead, of their pleasing and gentle manners, their good temper, their gratitude for the attention shown them, and their anxiety to employ themselves usefully.' While the ship's captain, Robert Craigie praised them as 'moral, very industrious, cleanly in their habits, accustomed to work in the fields, and when not so engaged to manufacture hosiery. 'They are religious, simple in their tastes, they speak English, and the appearance of most of them is pleasing. 'Indeed, I need not say they are infinitely superior to the usual run of female emigrants you are accustomed to see landed on your shores.' The Australian press and emigration societies could scarcely contain their excitement. Whereas Irish orphan emigrants were often sneered at and met with disparaging comments about their ability to work and look after their personal hygiene, the Shetland women were praised as Scandinavian in looks, and 'well adapted for country work', for their moral character and interest in religious worship. Shetland women were considered to be 'Presbyterian wives' used to isolation and skilled in the essentials for life in the bush such as 'baking, brewing, candle-making, carding, spinning, dairying, tending of cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry, caring of meat for winter stores, planting, hoeing, and clearing the garden and fields'. Their resilient nature – largely honed by the absence of men on the islands – and use of English and not Gaelic like their Hebridean counterparts, was also seen as a major benefit for teaching reading and writing. Hopes were high that 300 and even up to 500 Shetland women would make the journey. There would be disappointment, however. The next ship carried only 25, among them 17-year-old Martha Halcron accompanied by, presumably, her 19-year-old sister, Janet, and it would be the last. Despite having appeared eager to emigrate, when push came to shove the close-knit Shetland family structure meant even those with few prospects and a bleak future found leaving home for Tasmania a step too far. Although £5,500 had been sent from Australian colonists to pay specifically for the Shetland women's passage to Tasmania, the funds were diverted by the Colonial Land and Emigration Commission to pay for emigrants from England, Ireland and the Highlands to other locations. Much to Tasmanian despair, not another Shetland woman would make the journey. According to Veronique, whose research article has been published on Edinburgh University Press, the episode sheds interesting light on how Shetland women were regarded compared to other emigrants, and upends the notion that women were reluctant emigrants, forced into leaving their homes for new life abroad. 'The contrast between the image of these fair-haired, blue-eyed, hard-working and religious Shetlanders, was simply astonishing when compared to how other female emigrants had been perceived,' she says. 'This research has mostly affected the view I had of women emigrants as victims. "I was amazed to find how the women in Shetland showed up to enquire about emigrating. Obviously, with so few men around, there was not much in Shetland left for them. "What made it more reassuring for them was new emigration societies being created by women like Lady Jane Franklin, and that they would be taken care of. 'The extent of the gender imbalance in Shetland and Orkney - the highest in the UK - (meant) emigrating to the other end of the world was a choice, and an act of immense courage.'
