Laxton Hall Stables

The 17th Century, Grade II Listed Stables Building underwent major structural repairs and external alterations in order to prevent further structural subsidence. In all approximately 80m of underpinning works at varying depths up to 3.2m were carried out to the external walls of the stables, with stonework repairs subsequently carried out in order to complete the restoration.

The project certainly was not without it’s challenges, particularly due to the discovery of nesting pipistrelle and barbastelle bats within the stables building. This meant careful co-ordination with the client ecologists White Young Green and Natural England to ensure that our works would not have a detrimental impact to the bats. The measures taken to ensure this included installing 12no. bat boxes, WYG installing one way bat exclusion devices within the external walls and doing daily checks to ensure none of the bats had returned and noise testing of plant on site.

Further ecological discovery’s included protected slow worms found on site which had to be carefully re-housed away from the works, again under the supervision of WYG.

It was also imperative that the structural stonework restoration following the underpinning was done in accordance with the listed building regulations set out by East Northamptonshire. This included the use of Hydraulic Lime Mortar to preserve the historic character of the building, as well as the use of existing stonework taken from the demolition of a cottage building on site.