PLACES OF WORSHIP

Sustainable Futures for Cherished Places of Worship

Our conservation team has contributed significantly to the conservation, protection and adaptation of internationally acclaimed places of worship. Highlights from our portfolio include the Grade I listed St George’s Church in Bloomsbury, St Lawrence’s Church in Mereworth, St George’s Church in Hanover Square and the Grade II* St. Patricks Church in Soho London.

Services provided include:

• Full civil engineering design and structural • • • • • • engineering Reordering and refurbishment New developments Stabilisation and strengthening Impact and structural assessments Forensic engineering and fire damage Specialised conservation techniques We have partnered with leading architects to offer a holistic approach, combining sympathetic refurbishment with innovative design. Our team can help our clients make the right decisions such as increasing comfort and space, introducing energy-saving measures, or adding necessary modernising features, such as disabled access or traffic studies. We also help repurpose and redevelop places of worship to facilitate community gathering, charity work, cafes and events.

Adding value and innovation with honed expertise

We take pride in making that difference to projects - such as our work on Ettington Park Chapel in Warwickshire, a 13th century, Grade I ruin. Our final solution stabilised the structure, reduced risks and added visually to its appearance, which will improve over time. A significantly out of vertical wall represented a significant risk to the 800-year old structure. Working with the architect, our conservation team proposed a remotely placed pad and a raking strut in Corten steel which would seamlessly blend in with the adjacent trees and foliage. tree walkway in Kew Gardens by Marks Barfield Architects.

St George’s, Hanover Square, London, UK

St James, Sussex Gardens, UK

St George’s, Hanover Square

OVERVIEW

St. George’s Hanover Square is a splendid Grade I church, which was built between 1721-1724 to the designs of John James, as one of the fifty churches built by Queen Anne’s Act of 1711. St George’s follows Wren’s ideal plan for Anglican churches, where visibility and audibility were supremely important, with a spacious nave with aisles, above which are carried galleries on three sides. The structure of the church has remained, but the furnishings have been much modified.

PRIMARY ROLE

ByrneLooby have been involved in multiple works on St Georges, Hanover Square, on repairs and improvements to the interior. Working alongside Molyneux Kerr, the ByrneLooby team initially provided conservation engineering advice on the Church, carrying out condition surveys of the roof and ceiling timbers and advising on discreet strengthening remediation works. Fractures in the north wall were also repaired. Subsequently, ByrneLooby were appointed to produce working drawings and details for a new access to the original undercroft. Excavating the strip of land between the church and the adjoining buildings, allowed for the development and creation of a new part basement, a lift shaft and a new lobby entrance all within the required space. An original stone stair was re-arranged with a doorway opened at mid-height.

INNOVATION

Our long and detailed experience of Georgian churches meant that we were well placed to provide informed, sensitive, and straightforward advice on the repairs and alterations to this prestige historic asset, and are delighted that that St George’s Hanover Square is the third such project to receive the Georgian Group Award for work to a Georgian church. Location: London Capital Value: Undisclosed Project Name: St George’s, Hanover Square Country: UK Client: PCC of St George’s, Hanover Square

St George’s Bloomsbury

OVERVIEW

St George’s Bloomsbury is one of the twelve churches designed under the 1711 Act of Parliament for building Fifty New Churches, and was the sixth and final London church designed by the leading architect of the English Baroque, Nicholas Hawksmoor. The church was built between 1716 and 1731, but has been much altered over the years. Laid out on the traditional east-west axis, on a very congested site to a novel and complex floor plan, the orientation was changed to north-south as early as 1780.

PRIMARY ROLE

The condition of St George’s Church deteriorated over the years and ByrneLooby London was appointed the conservation project. The works included repairing the stonework inside and out, returning the undercroft to full use and reordering the church to east-west. The roof was fully repaired and recovered. ByrneLooby London completely re-organised the building services to incorporate a plant room in an available but otherwise unused space in the tower. This project has won numerous awards for architecture, conservation and craftsmanship.

INNOVATION / VALUE ADD

Our extensive experience of Georgian buildings enabled us to make an autorotative assessment of the structure, devise sensitive conservation repairs and assist the sculptor in the replacement of the heraldic beasts removed in 1886.

Awards: Wood Awards 2008 - Best use of British Timber RICS Awards 2008 - Craftsmanship in Conservation Natural Stone Craft Awards 2007 - Monuments and Carving Georgian Group Architectural Awards 2006 - Restoration of a Georgian Church The Natural Stone Awards 2006 - Craftsmanship

Location: London, UK Capital Value: Undisclosed Project Name: St George’s Bloomsbury Country: UK Client: PCC of St George’s Bloomsbury

St James’, Sussex Gardens

OVERVIEW

The first St. James’ church was consecrated in 1843 but was replaced in the early 1880s when the congregation exceeded its capacity. The current Grade II* listed Gothic Style church building was designed by the architect G. E. Street and opened in 1882.

Owing to the lack of space, Street turned the church completely around, so that the liturgical east-end became the geographical west-end and constructed the new church over and around the existing one. Brick barrel crypts had been laid underneath the original church and were broken thorough in the 1880s to install foundations for columns supporting the new structure above.

PRIMARY ROLE

In this modern redevelopment, ByrneLooby provided a structural scheme to convert the narrow chambers of the crypt to an open plan area for a day nursery and Community Hall. This required the removal of all of the brick walls supporting the vaulted crypt roof and replacing the support they offered with a completely new structural layout. This project required rigorous investigation into the load paths of the supporting members of the church. ByrneLooby’s design employed steel cradles hung from reinforced concrete beams cast in the floor above and provided a sequence of works to ensure the structural integrity of this magnificent building while the work was carried out.

INNOVATION

Experience of vaulted structures and Victorian architecture enabled a perceptive solution for removal of the supporting walls in the undercroft. Location: London Capital Value: £300k Project Name: St James’ Sussex Gardens Country: UK Client: PCC of St James Sussex Gardens