Inval Hall House, Haslemere, Surrey.
Inval Hall House was built somewhere in the second half of the 15th century. It had been altered and extended many times over the last six hundred years and suffered a number of poor restoration attempts. The additions to the house had beed recently demolished with a view to restoring the house in a sympathetic manner.
The main feature of a frame of this age is the roof construction, it features a 'crown post' roof type although some of the original crown plate had been cut to make way for the chimney, most likely added sometime in the 16th century. It was an open hall, that is to say that in it's original layout the central bay was open from the ground floor to the rafters with an open hearth in the center. The smoke would have been controlled by large shuttered windows on the west and east walls. (the eastern window has now been reopened as seen in the photos below)
We removed the rafters for cleaning and repair after carefully labeling them and recording their positions.
Meanwhile the ground floor was being prepared for a limecrete floor slab with underfloor heating pipes
We started by enveloping the building with a roofed scaffold. Then the work began, stripping back the layers until we could expose and evaluate the frame. Due to the way it had been extended in the late Victorian period, much of the frame had been bricked up. The building had been in a poor state of repair for some years and the timbers had begun to take on moisture. It was essential to stop the rot and make good the connections. All the rafters were lablled and removed for cleaning and repair. There was an assortment of horrors to remove from brown Sadolin paint to expanding foam.-
We started by applying hand cleft laths from a local supplir to the exterior of the frame. This would allow us to lime plaster between the timbers without having to cut the laths.
to be continued.......
Once the floors had been laid and the frame repaired, it was time to close in the structure......
Next we built a softwood frame on the exterior of the historic frame, this formed an envelope around the building for us to insulate and run services. The outer frame was then clad in 80mm wood fibre insulation board with sheep wool between timbers.
