Scaffolding Covers Guildhall Ahead of Re-roofing

Published on: 13 Mar, 2012
Updated on: 13 Mar, 2012

Scaffolding will soon cover the entire Guildhall in the High Street.

The scaffolding keeps going up and up ahead of the re-roofing of Guildford’s Guildhall in the High Street.

Currently, about eight floors of scaffolding have been erected, with another two to go. It will be topped by a metal roof over the historic 16th-century building. The whole of the scaffolding, including the boarding and the temporary roof, will then be wrapped in plastic sheeting ahead of the roofing work itself.

Take a close look at the scaffolding and even at street level you will notice that none of it actually touches the Grade I listed building. This is a condition of the work that has been approved by English Heritage.

The re-roofing is being undertaken by Daedalus Conservation, a division of Hampshire-based building firm R W Armstrong.

R W Armstrong formed this specialist historical repair and conservation division last year to provide expert consultancy and associated services such as stonemasonry, carpentry and fine joinery, plasterwork and brickwork.

R W Armstrong’s site manager Ian Gangadeen said: “The scaffolding work will take another week or so. There are a team of four putting it up. We can then begin to take off the old tiles and have a good look at what exactly needs to be done.”

Apart from laying new roof tiles, Mr Gangadeen said that some remedial and repair work will probably have to be done to some of the roof timbers.

Asked whether he expects to find anything interesting or usual in the building with such a long history, he said that unfortunately he did not expect to. “The roof was last re-laid in about the 1960s,” he said. “If there was anything to find, they would have found it then.”

Mr Gangadeen and the craftsmen who will be working on the Guildhall are experts in this field. He expects the work to be fairly straight forward, with a completion date around the first week of June.

Owners of the Guildhall, Guildford Borough Council confirm that the work will also include the installation of new guttering and new access routes to the roof space.

The Guildhall will remain open to the public and for functions as normal.