Those who have been following the work DTC and the FWW project have undertaken to support the restoration of Westgate Unitarian Chapel will know it’s all cylinders firing at the moment with a little help from a trusted partner: the Yorkshire Lime Company.
DTC’s own Sarah Cobham has been hard at work arranging roof restoring, render mending and a brilliant new addition to the project: Involving local Wakefield College students and teaching them the arts of traditional restoration. This scheme, which is funded by Historic England and overseen by Wakefield Council via the Heritage Action Zone project, even made the Wakefield Express!
Calling in the Experts
While Dream Time Creative has a bag full of skills and tricks, restoration requires training that we don’t have, and that is where the wonderful Yorkshire Lime Company have stepped up to the job.
The company is led by Lee Gillard and Nigel Copsey. Lee is a Heritage bricklayer and Nigel is a professional stone mason with a masters in building conservation.
Lee and Nigel have a fierce passion for using the correct materials for restoration projects — something that really matters to make sure the building is being preserved in the best way possible. This keen eye for detail meant, for example, that they specified that a hot mixed mortar was to be used for restoration work on Westgate Chapel.
This kind of insight allowed Lee and Nigel to pass on skills training to 10 college students from Wakefield College while undertaking repairs on the building, providing invaluable “on the job” training that those students can put on their CVs or even use as the basis for building a career path in historical building restoration.
What an amazing thing to add to the story of Westgate Chapel, and how incredible that we have been able to work with the Yorkshire Lime Company to ensure that Westgate Chapel will remain a key part of Westgate for many years to come!
You can read more about the work undertaken by The Yorkshire Lime Company over at their website where they go into greater detail about the restoration work done at Westgate Chapel!