Stonemasons start 14-month repairs at college

8:32am Monday 29th January 2007

STONEMASONS have started work at Winchester College on a three-phase contract to clean, repair, and restore the medieval Chapel and Hall.

The cleaning will remove the carbonation on the stone, the result of several hundred years of coal fires.

The stonemasons will then re-point the stonework, using traditional conservation techniques and replacing the original lime mortar.

The new mortar is made to the traditional method and should last the buildings for many centuries.

The work is scheduled to take 14 months, and will give the Wells Cathedral Stonemasons from Somerset an opportunity to work with Beer Stone, a white limestone from Devon, for which the firm is the UK's sole supplier.

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