4 Historic Timber Restoration Projects We Loved
At WL West & Sons we are honoured to have worked on many interesting projects. Here we are taking a look at four of the historic restorations we were lucky enough to assist with.
Queen’s Rowbarge Diamond Jubilee 2012 – Gloriana
In 2012, for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, a £1m boat named Gloriana was created to lead the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant of more than 1000 boats.
Gloriana is a rowbarge powered by 18 oarsmen that lead the pageant from Wandsworth to Tower Bridge. Lord Sterling, who was behind the project said “No-one’s really built anything like this for 200 years and the way we’ve built it, it will last for 200 years if looked after.â€
As Marine Timber specialists, WL West & Sons are proud to have provided some of the timber for the Queen’s Rowbarge, Gloriana. Read more here.
Today, Gloriana is retained by Lord Sterling and the charitable trust for Gloriana and is used to promote better use of the Thames.
HMS Warrior – Portsmouth
We’ve had the honour of working with the Royal Naval Dockyard Portsmouth for decades, including work on HMS Victory and various other projects.
In 2019, we were asked for assistance with replacing some of the decorative mouldings on the stern of HMS Warrior. After analysing samples of the profiles required we found they were made in softwood and laminated horizontally. We also found that they were in a state of disrepair with the paint holding them together.
At WL West & Sons we suggested that laminated them vertically would be a better solution. Each layer of the lamination had its own profile to make up the total shape of the moulding. Each one had its own template and tooling made, and was machined using our Weinig moulder. The lamination itself was done on site in the dockyard. With each piece being glued one at a time on to the stern of HMS Warrior.
The restoration was a resounding success and can be seen upon a visit to Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.
Churchill College – University of Cambridge
A new building at Churchill College at the University of Cambridge was opened in 2019. Prior to completion, Cottrell & Vermeulen architecture approached us for support with cladding.
We suggested home-grown Douglas fir over the Canadian Douglas fir that was being considered. After providing samples it was decided to clad with home-grown Douglas fir – both internally and externally.
The timber needed to be fire treated which was provided by UK specialist PTG Treatments. The end result was spectacular and the finished project was shortlisted for an Architects Journal Award in November 2019 in the `Higher Education’ category.
Natural History Museum – London
We were lucky enough to work with Jerram Falkus Construction to supply timber components for a staircase and flooring for the recently opened Anning Rooms in the Natural History Museum.
The treads and risers were constructed from F Jointed tessellated staves for stability, from specially selected European Character Oak. Each tread was rebated to enable a slip resistant edge capping to be installed, complimented perfectly by the flooring installed by Hutchison Flooring.
The Anning Rooms are located in the Natural History Museum and are an exclusive restaurant and lounge for the use of Members and Patrons. The rooms are named in honour of legendary fossil hunter Mary Anning.
WL West & Sons Ltd is a timber merchant and sawmill business with 150 years of experience. We provide a wide range of air-dried oak and kiln-dried oak timber products and supplies. We also build and install custom projects for our customers.
Our wood products, building materials and certified wood are manufactured and sold with the endorsement of forest certification and the Forest Stewardship Council FSC
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