The Lady Radnor Award Stonework repairs at the Old Mill, Harnham

 The Old Mill is a historic building of exceptional importance and merit, prominently located and very distinctive. The oldest part displays late medieval doorways and windows, together with very high quality walling in chequerwork of flint and stone. The flint panels had given cause for concern, with a considerable amount of recessed pointing which might indicate a risk of the flints coming loose, and some of the moulded stonework was suffering from blackening, indicating the formation of a potentially damaging calcium sulphate skin. While there was clearly a need for repair work, there was equally a threat that in the wrong hands, this could have led to harmful effects, not least in visual terms, with the potential for a degradation of the mill’s much-loved character. The judges were delighted to find that the work had clearly been entrusted to the right people, as could most obviously been seen from photos showing the blackened and encrusted stonework at the outset, an appearance transformed by careful cleaning, and the application of a judiciously chosen overall lime/stonedust shelter coat, which both unifies the overall look, and provides a measure of protection against future decay. A policy had been adopted of only intervening in the flint panels where there was a danger of flints coming loose, as opposed to filling recessed joints for the sake of it, and the other walling stones had been repointed as necessary, with replacements only inserted where it was essential. A major consideration, when work was first talked about, was the risk of clumsy work being carried out to the very sensitive flintwork and spoiling the whole building, but this had clearly been averted with complete success. The overall result was a building which retains its character intact, and will not need further intervention in its stonework for many years. The judges had no trouble at all in deciding that the project’s achievement fully merited the Lady Radnor Award, as something of quite exceptional merit.