Bradgate Park: How do you restore a 500-year-old Tudor chapel?

BBC News

11-03-2025

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.