With historic lighting, you can replace or you can repurpose Mark Harper, head of design at bespoke lighting designers and manufacturers Dernier & Hamlyn, explains why new is not necessarily best in ecclesiastical and heritage buildings
St Paul’s Cathedral interior (left) and the Pugin Room chandelier at the Palace of Westminster (right)
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Our largest project of that type was at LIGHTING IN HERITAGE BUILDINGS the Palace of Westminster, which our team fulfils many functions. There’s the practical worked on for some 30 years – restoring illumination – and in those that are open to and manufacturing beautiful chandeliers for the public that includes a legal requirement for various areas, including the chambers in the emergency lighting. Then there is the aesthetic. House of Commons and the House of Lords Empathetic and effective lighting can make or as well as many other important spaces. break the environment and the ambience of Sometimes our team works to repurpose a place. existing lighting for a new application. A great Our team of craftsmen have been making example of that is at the Old Royal Naval beautiful bespoke lighting since 1888 and the College in Greenwich. When new visitor fruits of their labours can be seen in a wide welcome facilities were introduced in the King variety of ecclesiastical and heritage buildings. William Undercroft, a new public entrance was One of the most notable projects was required to be lit by historically appropriate creating and manufacturing bespoke external lighting. The designers proposed new lighting for St Paul’s Cathedral, which would over-door lighting to match existing entrances see chandeliers hung in the main body of and asked us to convert a lantern formerly the cathedral for the first time. The new mounted on a stone pedestal elsewhere on site fittings were produced to look as if they into a wall-mounted bracket fitting. That not could have been there since the cathedral’s only ensured architectural integrity, but also 17th-century beginnings, which was provided a cost-effective solution. achieved by our team working closely with the cathedral’s design team. Designing and manufacturing bespoke chandeliers for one of the most important ecclesiastical buildings in the world is, of course, a great honour and an opportunity that is only available very rarely. What is more usual in our work is using archive imagery to inform replication of lighting that has disappeared over time or has been damaged to the point of being unrepairable. Belfast City Hall
While at Belfast City Hall we designed and manufactured a range of fittings, including a 1.3 tonne chandelier, which is believed to be the largest chandelier in Ireland, to replace one that was damaged beyond repair when the building was bombed in 1941. The only reference material available was photography from the turn of the 20th century and it is not known what became of the original chandelier. As costs become ever more in focus and with eyes increasingly on sustainability issues too, we are increasingly working on projects to restore existing lighting rather than manufacture from new. For example, we refurbished and upgraded 14 of the light fittings at St John the Evangelist Church in East Dulwich, including restoring the gilding and adapting the fittings to accommodate energy-saving LED lamps. And if you came to our factory today you would see our team working hard to restore and replicate almost 100 light fittings of various types for a 1930s public building that is set to reopen in the autumn after extensive refurbishment. In summary, new bespoke lighting for heritage buildings can be the best solution for some; but in many cases the more cost-effective, sustainable and historically accurate way will be to restore or repurpose what already exists. q www.ecclesiasticalandheritageworld.co.uk
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