McCurdy & Co. are Winners of THE WOOD AWARDS 2005
The Wood Awards 2005 have awarded McCurdy & Co. the ‘Structural Award’ AND ‘The Best Use of British Timber Award’ in recognition of the excellence for their work on a remarkable historic reconstruction project in Somerset.
McCurdy and Co. has, for more than 25 years, been respected for the quality of its repair and reconstruction of Historic Timber Frame Buildings. Previous winning schemes include: ‘The Carpenters’ Award’ for Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London and ‘The English Heritage Award’ for The Heston Lych Gate repairs.
The Pilton Barn is one of four surviving monastic barns built by Glastonbury Abbey around 1300. In 1963 it was struck by lightening and the whole roof, then thatched, was consumed by fire destroying all trace of the 14th century roof. The Pilton Barn Trust was set up in 1996 by Michael Eavis, of Glastonbury Festival fame, to safeguard the barn as an ancient monument. Caroe and Partners Architects produced a feasibility study and McCurdy & Co were appointed as main contractors with the remit to undertake the essential research and design the roof structure.
The roof is described as ‘a two tiered raise base cruck’ which consists of large curved timbers that rise up from pockets in the stone walls to join the collars in the roof. A further pair of smaller crucks on top of this main collar creates the imposing two tired structure. A cruck rises in the vertical plane of the wall and, following the natural curve of the timber, is then capable of forming a section of the roof slope, thus fulfilling a job usually achieved using two principal timbers. There are more than 250 curved and shaped timbers in the roof and the size and shape of each type is different.
It was important to McCurdy & Co. to use English Oak as it still grows the same way it did 700 years ago, providing a great variety of shapes as well as many other attributes. It serves as a lesson for conservation work that where English Oak was originally used there is no convincing argument for not following the same practice now. The sourcing and selection of the English Oak was achieved by working very closely with the timber merchant. Standing trees were selected by use of small templates which Peter McCurdy made of the correct shapes of the required crucks and ‘eying these up’ to the tree. Once felled McCurdy & Co. made full size templates of the different shapes required from the logs for use in the sawmill.
This extraordinary reconstruction began like a detective investigation and developed into a fascinating and revealing educational project, with research being carried out as far away as the Getty Institute in the US and as near as the three other surviving Monastic barns. It presented many challenges as well as opportunities to research and understand original methods used to construct the building and in particular the way the oak was selected and used.
Peter McCurdy, Managing Director, said…”It is immensely rewarding to receive two Wood Awards for the Pilton Barn. The judges clearly recognised the care and attention that went into the design, use of timber and the fabrication of the roof structure. We are delighted that the work of our highly skilled craftspeople has been nationally acknowledge.”
