This was a large-scale and exciting restoration project for us, carried out in May/June 2013.  Many of the highly skilled Ironart team were involved with the meticulous repairs carried out to this lovely pair of historic wrought iron entrance gates which had some fascinating detailing.

The gates were cleaned of all paint and rust for evaluation. Then the panels were removed and the fixings taken off to reveal the bare frame which was badly bent and needed straightening. One of the most interesting aspects of these gates were the fixing details – as you can see from the images here: ‘through rivets’, ‘collaring’ and some highly unusual dovetail joints.

The gates are covered in leaves, about half of which were missing or damaged. The team at Ironart took one leaf apart at a time, and cross referenced the missing ones to those that were existing. There were four different sizes, some slight variations. We used pure iron to recreate the missing leaves. Some of the scrolls were wasted, and where bars were badly wasted we used recycled wrought iron drawn out to the correct section size to replace them. Where there was minor wastage we use an inert filler which is the preferred solution where you want minimal interference with the original material.

It’s very hard to put a date to these gates – probably 19thC –  but they have a lovely monogram detail in the centre of each panel, which the team believed were added at a later date. Some of the bars are marked with a manufacturers make, denoting the grade of wrought iron.

We relish these heritage projects which give us an opportunity to appreciate the designs, skills and techniques of previous generations of artist blacksmiths in the UK. If you have a set of heritage ironwork gates or some ornamental architectural metalwork that is in need of repair, please get in touch for some advice because we’d love to help.  Click on the images below to view.