Adventures in Eyemouth

It is only a short stroll to the shops from our holiday rental cottage in Eyemouth and this is pretty damn convenient. The former Church of Scotland round the corner is now a museum and opposite is striking Victorian Gothic stone building.

It looked distinctly vacant with the usual blocked gutters and dampness from failed rainwater down pipes but what a fantastic corner turret with fish scale slates. I wandered up the street wondering vaguely whether it might be for sale and there it was in the window of Currie Johnston & Co. Solicitors and Notaries Public, offers around £160,000. I popped in and asked if I might have particulars."The owner's in the back," I was told by the tight grey curled receptionist. He was extracted, wild-haired and unsettled, and we sat down. He explained his bad luck, ill health and the step back from principle of a firm run by his father and uncle to back room boy and employee of the firm now owning the practice. And thank God he no longer had the admin and (shuddering) the dealings with the Law Society. There was a sale agreed in principle with a community group, Heritage Lottry Fund Bid, how could he have been so hasty, gentleman's agreement, open to offers, would I like to have a look? I agreed to come back at ten to twelve after making coffee for my wife.

I did and here are some photographs of what had been the bank manager's flat or hoose, as my host designated it. I had failed to read the particulars carefully enough, as Mrs Gowthorpe pointed out later, but it became clear during the walk around that the pig-in-the-poke for sale is a largely flying freehold on the first and attic floors. Charming space but with 1,000 sq ft of poorly-lit, leaking roof space and a basement strong room. And it is full to bursting with old legal files, which your man is unlikely to have the will to sort. The rest of the building is owned by the Council and the roof and structural responsibilities are shared. Nightmare possibilities ensue and although only listed Grade C, the building would eat money and a Sassenach frustrating a local community group and the Council would be a pariah with little chance of getting approval for anything. So that's a no, then. And in Eyemouth, are ye touched?

Dunelm House, Durham City - Making a case for listing

In the Observer on 12 February Rowan Moore regretted the decision by DCMS not to list Dunelm House, the brutalist student union building completed in 1966 by Architects Co-Partneship and Ove Arup,which is adjacent to and connected with Sir Ove Arup's Kingsgate footbridge (Listed Grade I).

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/feb/12/durham-university-dunelm-house-threat-of-demolition-brutalism

As a student, I was not enthusiastic about the building and mostly had little interest in any buildings constructed after 1914. After 40 years looking at and working with buildings my views have changed and I decided that I would write, belatedly, to the Secretary of State to say why I think that Dunelm House should be listed and that it should not be granted a certificate of immunity from listing. The eagle-eyed will notice that I incorrectly state that the bridge is Grade II listed.

Wednesday 15.02.17

Karen Bradley MP

Secretary of State

Department of Culture, Media & Sport

100 Parliament Street

London

SW1A 2BQ

Dear Madam,

Dunelm House, New Elvet, Durham City DH1 3AN

Refusal of an application for a Grade II listing

I am gravely concerned at your refusal of Historic England’s proposal to list this building. I understand that your department is considering the grant of a temporary certificate of immunity from listing.  I believe that this is inappropriate and could result in the loss of an important mid-20^th Century building.

I should first set out my background and connections to this building. I was a Durham undergraduate from 1974-77, when the building was barely ten years old. It was already rather scruffy and maintenance appeared scant. This is not unusual for public sector buildings in the UK, where capital grants dominate and budgets for building maintenance are an easy victim of budget cuts. At the time there was a popular myth that concrete is a maintenance-free product.

After graduating I became a Chartered Surveyor and my professional life has involved the repair, maintenance and adaptation of buildings, some of them concrete and built in the 1960s. Until my retirement in October last year, I spent eight years as a consultant at Arup but I should make it clear that I have not seen the report prepared on behalf of the University. It was dealt with by another Arup region and it is no doubt confidential. However, the key issues have been discussed online and are not unusual.

As a student, I thought the building brutal and unsympathetic. I now have a different view, after a professional career studying and leading the maintenance, refurbishment and construction of a wide range of buildings from medieval to new developments. I believe that Dunelm House should be listed for the following reasons.

1.     It is a major public sector building designed by a serious architectural practice, some of whose other modernist buildings have already been listed.

2.       It is a unique building that responds to a very difficult site in an innovative way, clinging to the vertiginous bank of the River Wear and forming a dramatic architectural set piece in conjunction with Sir Ove Arup’s Grade II listed Kingsgate Bridge. Dunelm House is linked to the bridge approach and both are concrete structures designed by Arup that work together. 

3.       There are fashions in building design, reflecting cultural changes from generation to generation. For this reason, a long perspective context is needed to assess the relative significance of individual buildings, whose importance may not be widely appreciated until some generations afterwards.

4.       Significant numbers of medieval, Georgian and Victorian buildings were demolished after World War II, often because they were unfashionable and neglected. A backlash resulted in legislation to protect buildings of cultural, architectural and archaeological significance. The great majority have proved adaptable to changing requirements and are popular places to visit, to live, to work or to be entertained. There is every reason to suppose that Dunelm House could be adapted for a range of uses to provide a long-term economic future as part of the University. Listing would be no bar to this.

5.       The fashion for brutal modern buildings was relatively short-lived in the UK and only a limited number were built. Many have already been demolished. They are a relatively minor, but important, part of the architectural and cultural history of the UK in the 20^th Century. The controversy that they generate is perhaps a sign of how importantly different they are from the mainstream of cautious, even unadventurous buildings. It is very important to retain  buildings from all design eras because, once lost, they are lost forever. This is why listing matters, protecting buildings so that they can provide future generations with unique visual histories of the varied way that development has occurred over time.

6.       Inherent construction defects have apparently been cited as reasons not to list Dunelm House. Regular roof leaks have arisen from the flawed original design and there is some spalling of concrete to external walls. These are not valid reasons not to list.  Other important buildings are imperfect and have design defects. The roof at Castle Drogo in Devon (Lutyens 1910, listed Grade I) leaked from the outset. It was difficult to arrive at an acceptable solution but remedial works by the National Trust have been in progress for some time. The cement mortar harling (external render) used at The Hill House near Helensburgh (Rennie Mackintosh 1904, listed Category A) was an ill-chosen innovation substituted for traditional moisture-permeable lime render. Moisture has been trapped in the rubble stone walls, damaging the interior of the building. The National Trust for Scotland is developing a solution. Remedying the leaking roof of Dunelm House will be relatively costly but it is essential to preserve an important building.

Montagu Evans has advised the University on the commercial and practical issues relating to the building, making a case for exemption from listing. Quite properly the firm has acted as advocate on behalf of its client. I have not seen the firm’s report but I would expect that it relates to the cost and impracticability of retaining the existing building. I raise the following practical and commercial points.

7.       It is apparent that in some areas thin patches of surface concrete have broken away from the external walls (spalling), pushed off by rusted reinforcement. This not unusual in buildings of this age and construction. There are well-established concrete repair solutions.

8.       The tiered design of Dunelm House is unlikely to permit universal disabled access to all areas but it can be significantly improved by a range of measures. The legal framework for disabled access in existing buildings recognises these limitations, which are not a consideration in respect of decisions about listing. Thoughtful design is required but many listed buildings have been successfully adapted.

9.       The University has expanded greatly since 1966 and Dunelm House may no longer be large enough for use as a Students’ Union. On the other hand, I read recently that Students’ Unions are less intensively used because of competition from external bars and coffee houses. Nevertheless it seems likely that a much larger venue is needed for major events and this is part of the University’s strategy. There is a lack of event space generally in Durham; Dunelm House could provide a range of venues of varying size in a good location midway between the peninsular and the more outlying colleges. The enormous growth of the University has also generated other demands for space; it would be surprising if the remaining space in the building could not find other uses.

10.   Dunelm House is in need of imaginative refurbishment. Like so many tired and shabby buildings, its neglected appearance encourages demands for demolition, when it remains fundamentally sound but with issues to be overcome. The building could be very greatly improved by relatively simple measures such as concrete cleaning and painting. More significant interventions could also be very effective in the clear, well-lit spaces created by the open aspect and tiered design.

11.   There is considerable embodied energy in any building but the walls, floors and roof of Dunelm House are of concrete, greatly increasing the amount of locked-in carbon dioxide equivalent. It would be contrary to the principles of sustainable development to demolish a 50-year old building of this design in order to use yet more resources to replace it.

12.   This a very challenging site to develop, on a very steep bank above a river that floods regularly.  It is almost certain to be included within the widened boundary of the World Heritage Site. If the University decided to redevelop the site for other purposes, these factors would result in a replacement building would be considerably more costly than average, with greatly increased development risk.

Retaining and adapting Dunelm House through a thoughtful refurbishment would seem to be less costly, lower risk and more sustainable than redevelopment. It would also preserve an important example of mid-20^th Century architecture, which is worth listing. We need to protect cherished buildings that have gained wide acceptance but we also need more controversial buildings or we risk forgetting our history.

I hope that the points raised in this letter will be given due consideration. Dunelm House is never likely to rival Durham Cathedral as a popular attraction but it is worth recalling that the Cathedral too was once shockingly new.

Yours faithfully,

Brian Gowthorpe BA Hons. (Dunelm) FRICS

Accredited Building Conservation Professional

Email: brian.gowthorpe@gmail.com

cc. Catherine Croft, 20^th Century Society

Dealing with Japanese Knotweed

We are reasonably keen gardeners, especially so when we were younger, and we recognised fallopia japonica when we bought our current house in Mellor, Lancashire in 1989. At that time it was known to be a rapidly spreading and invasive pest, a legacy of the Victorian plant hunters, that does not have any natural predators in the UK. It is an attractive plant with reddish stems and leaves with a distinctive shade of green.

By Ancatdubh43 at English Wikipedia [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Section 14(2) of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 states that:

“if any person plants or otherwise causes to grow in the wild any plant which is included in Part 2 of Schedule 9, he shall be guilty of an offence”.

Japanese knotweed is a Schedule 9 listed plant, as are Himalayan balsam, rhododendron, giant hogweed and numerous other plants. As a result anyone allowing it to spread from their land onto others is guilty of an offence.

The Environmental Protection Act 1990 requires that it must be disposed of at a disposal facility licensed to deal with it. If allowed to grow unchecked Knotweed, which propagates rhizomes (think root ginger) can travel long distances below ground at some depth and can damage roads, foundations and walls.

Perhaps surprisingly, it took time for mortgagees and the RICS to press the issue seriously, the first edition of the RICS guide relating to Knotweed and residential property only having come out in May 2012. We had successfully discouraged our Knotweed by nipping out early shoots and burning them but it still re-surfaced in a the south-western corner of our garden each year. In view of our intention the sell the house, I had been following articles and correspondence and when the guide came out I contacted Phlorum, a specialist consultant and treatment contractor with an office in Manchester. We instructed them to carry out chemical treatment which travels down into the rhizomes, backed up by a ten year guarantee. By these measures we hoped to prevent a potential problem during a sale. The cost was a little under £2,000 with three annual re-inspections to confirm the success of the treatment. The alternative is deep excavation to remove contaminated soil. This is costly and can add substantially to the cost of developing sites that are affected.

Only when emptying a large plastic drum of soil and water for disposal, when tidying the garden did I recall that prior to burning the Knotweed shoots, I had at one time put them into water to rot down. Given the pernicious survival capacity of the plant, I decided that I could not assume that this process would necessarily have been successful. I concluded that I should dry the soil residue and sieve out any organic material for burning. I dried the soil in a paved, sheltered spot and sieved it twice. The residue was dried in a plastic box in the airing cupboard and burnt in the garden incinerator, an elaborate precaution, perhaps, but this plant is one of the great survivors and I suspect that following a nuclear holocaust couch grass, bindweed and knotweed would soon emerge triumphant.

Acting on an RICS Homebuyer Report

Before Christmas I found myself on the receiving end of the RICS Homebuyer Report commissioned by the intended purchasers of our home of 27 years. I had not seen one before because, although I am a surveyor, house surveys are best dealt with by active specialists who do this sort of work regularly. I have spent a lot of time over the last five years dealing with repairs and decoration to present our house as well as possible but I knew that the surveyor would need to find some issues to make his report worthwhile and I was unlikely to have covered everything.

The standard report is a good document, with enough flexibility for a proper range of dwelling types and ages. The surveyor (60s, like me, tweed jacket, brown brogues, red Alfa Romeo 156) was at the house for perhaps three hours and his report, passed on by the purchasers, included lots of useful information, some of which came from questions during the inspection. The purchasers asked if we would be prepared to install a chimney cowl, some additional air bricks and to re-bed and re-point the copings to the boundary wall. The time of year is not ideal for such works but I agreed that we would do them, rather than risk a reduction of the price at greater cost; had already having taken nine months to secure a buyer, partly as a result of the European Union Referendum.

Chimney Cowl

The chimney was most easily dealt with: I ordered a sturdy cowl from the rather charmingly Victorian-sounding Nonfumo Flue Systems Limited of Stokenchurch, Bucks. The Internet saves an awful lot of chasing or phoning round. Access to the chimney was more difficult because it is necessarily the highest point of the house so as to dispel smoke effectively. My triple stage ladder is not quite long enough for access via the gable end but by roping a cat ladder to the roof on a dry, sunny morning, I was able to reach the chimney by ladder from the rear elevation. The cowl is designed to be secured by hook bolts, whose own weight drops them down inside the chimney, to be tightened in place by external wing nuts.

Wall copings

The garden wall, which forms the northern boundary, was originally the boundary of the kitchen garden at Elswick Lodge, opposite. This is the large, detached, late-Victorian house built by John Smalley, owner of the adjacent Elswick Mill. Grace’s Guide to UK industrial heritage lists cotton mills in Blackburn in 1891 and the Elswick Mill is stated as having 792 looms, more than the majority of individual mills in Blackburn at the time. The mill produced ‘fancys’, the name given to more complex, textured fabrics of a fancy weave, which required more complex looms.

The garden wall was built using a hard, dark red Accrington-type brick from a Blackburn brickworks, capped with a hollow, triangular-section glazed fire clay coping. Our side of the wall was pointed ten years’ ago but the copings were not re-bedded and all of the lateral joints were open, allowing water into the wall, which would eventually have caused problems. I would have liked to have used lime mortar, like the original wall, but it takes considerably longer to harden than modern Portland cement mortars and it is less suitable for use in cold, wet weather, requiring protection for much longer. I began to remove the copings, and hacked off the mortar from them and the wall, re-bedding and re-pointing in 1:1:6 Portland cement, hydrated lime and sand mortar mix using a bucket trowel and a finger trowel. After some trial and error, I decided to sponge the mortar joints clean to minimise the mortar residues and the later use of hydrochloric acid brick cleaner for cleaning off. This also produced a joint more similar to a weathered lime mortar joint in which the fine aggregate tends to be more visible. Imperfections in the shape of the copings made it impossible to achieve a completely level finish but the overall effect is quite pleasing and the throat moulds in the overhangs help shed water away from the surfaces of the wall. I found that creepers and many garden snails had colonised the interior of the coping blocks. I managed to complete the work on and off over about three weeks: the wall is 85 foot long and I could not work during heavy rain or when frosts were predicted.

Additional air bricks

Satisfying the request to provide additional air bricks to improve ventilation of the voids beneath the timber floors of the two ground floor reception rooms was more difficult. This was partly why I had not done the work in 2013, after I inserted insulation between the joists and to below-floor radiator and other pipework. There already were four air bricks in the flank walls but one is obscured by ivy and two are now behind kitchen units in the ground floor garage.  It was advisable to provide some more ventilation. The kitchen and lobby extend three quarters of the way along the rear of the house, two steps down from the reception rooms, so any vent in this stretch had to be internal but better than none at all. I cut out the equivalent of a single brick with a bolster chisel and fitted a standard, white hit-and-miss ventilation grille with an integral insect screen. Outside the back door I cut out a single engineering brick and its equivalent in the inner leaf of the cavity wall using a fine bolster chisel, a reciprocating saw and a long cold chisel. The joints in Accrington-type brick are very fine and it was difficult to remove a brick without some damage to the face of those adjacent. I mortared in a standard fire clay air brick, a close match for those already existing. They too appear to have been inserted after the original date of construction, 1905, perhaps a result of a building society survey in the 1970s on behalf of the Kershaws, from whom we bought the house.

This left the most difficult, front elevation, constructed in ashlar sandstone blocks, almost certainly from one of two quarries in the village that used to provide building stone. These blocks are about six inches deep. The first, in the bay window was removable, although not without difficulty, using the reciprocating saw and I managed to cut it, using an angle grinder and a bolster chisel but the rubble stone inner leaf was too deep for this. I hired a 110v Hilti breaker and created an air path. The block in the other location in the front wall of the sitting room could not be split in the same way as the first but the Hilti breaker proved more precise in stone cutting than I had expected and I was able to create a neat cut following the groove created by the angle grinder. The inner leaf was also broken through but creating an air path was more difficult as there are central heating pipes, insulation and wiring in this relatively congested location.

Historic solid floor care and underfloor heating

SPAB (The Society for the Protection of Ancient buildings has recently published a guidance note.

http://www.spab.org.uk/downloads/Historic%20Floors%20Guidance%20Note.pdf

This guidance reinforces Historic England's advice about the need to think carefully about strategies for the repair and maintenance of historic solid floors. Wear, patination, cracking and undulations are significant elements of the character of such floors and once they have been lifted, their historic character cannot properly be recreated. Traditional construction methods for tiled or flag floors rely on moisture's being able to evaporate through the lime mortar joints so as to prevent the build up of moisture below the floor. Re-bedding and re-pointing in Portland cement mortar prevents this from occurring.

Medieval encaustic tiles, Winchester Cathedral

Installing underfloor heating is a popular solution in solid floored buildings but this disturbs the original floor and, if laid on a modern concrete slab with a damp proof membrane, dampness in the earth beneath the floor is likely to be displaced to a higher level in the surrounding walls by capillary action. 'Breathable' sub-floors can be constructed but they need careful specification and the SPAB guide provides advice on this and alternative methods such as trench heating, if the specific circumstances justify an invasive excavation.

The Joy of Bricks

One of my more unusual recent jobs in a task-driven life was to find and clean a spare house brick, wrap it and post it to East Sussex.  The original lime mortar came off very easily and the traces could be removed with a damp cloth. This brought to mind Alec Clifton Taylor: there are other enthusiastic writers about bricks but appreciation rings out in his 1962 classic, The Pattern of English Building. He lays out the history and variety of bricks, the skills of the itinerant brick maker, especially in firing, and the glorious flowering of brick building under the Tudors. This sustained burst of development had much to do with the relative political stability after the Wars of the Roses, giving the nobility and squirearchy confidence of to invest in enclosures and highly profitable sheep farming. They and successful merchants and financiers built new houses or new wings on existing houses. It is perhaps no coincidence that the fortunes of what became the Duchy of Devonshire were established in this period, by Sir William Cavendish in recognition of assisting Henry VIII to raise money from the dissolution of the monasteries. He married Bess of Hardwick and they were both great builders of houses.

The Romans were great brick makers and began to fire bricks (as opposed to drying them in the sun) under The Empire, favouring a larger but shallower brick than is now usual in Britain. The 'average' Roman brick was around 18 inches long and 12 inches broad and perhaps a little over 2 inches deep but there were many variations in shape and size. The skills and practice spread through the Empire and a few Roman brick structures remain in England. Unfortunately the skills died out when the Romans left in the Fifth Century and seem to have been reintroduced by Flemish craftsmen: the earliest medieval examples are all around Colchester. There was migration to East Anglia from the Low Countries in addition to substantial imports of finished bricks.

In Lancashire, where we live currently, there was some local brick making in the 16th and 17th centuries and this expanded rapidly to support the industrial revolution, particularly after 1850 when the Brick Tax was abolished. Many later spinning mills and weaving sheds were of mainly brick construction with Welsh slate roofs. Distribution of these materials became much more widespread by canal and, later, by railway, allowing areas with high quality fire clay deposits to specialise in brick production. As the mills increased in height the increased structural loads demanded bricks of higher compressive strength. In some early mills bricks were of inconsistent quality, leading to some structural failures, partly as a result of extrapolating traditional barn building techniques beyond their reasonable limits but also because of the urgency. The enterprises were so profitable that some new mills could pay back the investment within as little as four years, with huge profits to be made beyond that time.

It is this newer type of machine-made, dense, high-strength engineering brick that I posted off today.

Woods Brothers of Blackburn produced a hard, dense, Accrington-type brick and it was employed for as the facing brick for the flank and rear cavity wall elevations when our house was built, originally as a baker's shop, in 1905. Prof. Duncan Philips put out a recent appeal for historic brick samples on the RICS Building Conservation Forum and welcomed my offer to send him one of these for the collection of historic bricks that he is putting together. The receipt shows that it weighs 4.533 kilos (they are very dense and slightly larger than average UK brick size) and the postage cost was £12.98! I wish him luck with his collection. He practises as listedbuildingsurveys.co.uk and is a Chartered Environmentalist as well as Chartered Building Surveyor.