Royal York Crescent is a major residential street in Clifton, Bristol. It overlooks the docks, and much of the city can be seen from it. This terrace of 46 Grade II* houses was built in the late Georgian period. The team at Ironart worked with local conservation specialists Ellis and Co on the restoration of a large balcony with balustrading which spans the facades of two houses on Royal York Crescent.
In World War II – and between 24th Nov 1940 and 11th April 1941 there were six major bombing raids on the City of Bristol and houses on this crescent suffered bomb and shrapnel damage. Due to the presence of the Bristol Harbour and The Bristol Aeroplane Co, the city was a target for bombing, and the dockland area was easily found by enemy bombers tracing a course up the River Avon from Avonmouth.
The balcony balustrade and supports were removed from site by the Ironart team and carefully transported back to the Ironart workshops in Larkhall for assessment. The pieces were methodically deconstructed into sections before being carefully shot-blasted to remove the many layers of historic paint. Underneath was evidence of rust jacking (where water gets into joints and forces the bars apart) and pitting (surface corrosion of the original wrought iron) together with some significant shrapnel damage. Some of the decorative scroll detailing on the friezes had wasted away over the years, lead cast details had fallen off, and the balustrade was missing structural elements such as feet and sections of handrail. The Ironart team worked hard to sympathetically reinstate the structural elements, copy-casting lead details and replacing the missing scrollwork to match the existing.
The balustrade was reinstalled a few weeks later looking glorious in it’s elevated setting. If you have a balcony balustrade on a listed building and you’d like to talk to us about a possible restoration – please pick up the phone or drop us an email and we can offer advice on where to start!