The Monastery of St Francis and Gorton Charitable Trust was formed in 1996 to save this magnificent grade II listed building. The Trust managed to raise in the region of £6 million including grants from various heritage funds and regeneration agencies, overseen by one of the trustees, HRH Prince of Wales.
We personally discussed our involvement in the re-slating of the Church and the new roof to the restored Monastery. Using New Welsh slates cut using the new flamed technique, we have restored the roof to its former glory.
This building is reportably the oldest cotton mill in Manchester, restored into offices, we closely worked with English Heritage to supply a material as close to the original coverings as possible. We fixed a diminishing Heather Blue slate specially produced by McAlpine Slate quarries for this project.
Project; Rotunda Roof, Leeds City Museum
Conversion of the Leeds Civic Theatre into the new Leeds Museum building encompassed renewing the roof coverings. As a listed building the roof had to be replaced with a material as near as possible to the original. New Penrhyn Heather Blue Welsh slates were fixed on all slopes including the central 'Rotunda' roof. Fixing these required every slate to be carefully trimmed to fit the curved profile whilst maintaining acceptable side laps.
Project; Shibden Hall, Halifax
Shibden Hall, a grade I listed building, was recently re-roofed re-using as much of the existing stone slates as possible to retain the character of the building. Some of the short fall required new stone slates to be manufactured from a local quarry and had to match as near as possible the profile of the existing (some of these resembled stone flags rather than slates!). Re-roofing the adjacent Tythe Barn required the stone slating to be back pointed using traditional materials and methods.