Context 152 - November 2017

C O N T E X T 1 5 2 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 7 25 Floorscape Fine and Decorative Arts (NADFAS), before being lifted and removed to storage. The next step was to consolidate the ground under- neath the north aisle which had been causing the floor to collapse. The only practical way to achieve this was to fill the voids with grout, a process that was not reversible. Over 2,500 litres were poured in using gravity, not pumped, with one void alone requiring 119 litres. Underfloor heating pipes were then laid over the consolidated floor surface and covered with a screed before the stone flooring was laid. Two-thirds of the floor in the north aisle has now been re-covered with the original ledger stones, and the rest has been laid in new stone. The new heating system is being monitored to measure its effectiveness with different floor surfaces. The test phase included laboratory investigations by physics students from the University of Bath to determine the most suitable flooring material to deliver effective heating. The thermal mass of the replacement stone is important here; it needs to offer a good performance, as the qualities of the ledger stones vary enormously.Those in the poorest condition may not be reused in the floor, but will be retained and displayed in due course. Some of the historically important stones have been sensitively repaired using a variety of methods, again in a test phase to establish the optimal repair solutions. As well as installing the heat exchangers and pipework in the Great Drain, the project involves replacing the boilers in the plant room, using the adjoining former coal store for the heat pumps, and an extensive array of pipework, with filters, storage tanks, and absolute segregation of hot-spring water and heating-system water supply. The Abbey’s interior was dressed by the Scott restora- tion with typical Victorian low pews over the ledger- stone-dominant floor in both nave and side aisles, and more decorative tiered pews in the chancel. The floor repairs and proposals for re-ordering the interior with stackable seating in the body of the nave have met with some opposition. In particular, the Victorian Society has opposed the permanent removal of the nave pews as the loss of a key work from Scott’s church restoration period. In its campaign to preserve the interior dressings, the society describes Scott’s nave furniture as ‘intended to “complete” the church as it would have been if the Reformation had not stopped its construction’. It describes the pews as ‘modelled on those in other 16th-century Somerset churches’. The Bath PreservationTrust (BPT), in contrast, has come out in support of the project, considering that ‘on balance [it] believes that the conservation and communal benefits achieved by the overall project outweigh the harm’. The trust believes that the interior space as revealed by the pew removal more closely represents the Georgian experience of the Abbey and of many of those buried beneath its floor. The BPT has called for the ledger stone records and the associated history to be publicly accessible. Until the floor stabilisation works started, the Scott pews covered a large proportion of the ledger stones, both protecting them and obscuring them from view. The survey of ledger stones by Abbey and NADFAS volunteers was extended to the whole floor in the early spring of 2017, when more than 50 volunteers captured information on the condition, inscription and position of each stone. The Abbey proposes to use the stories collated from the inscriptions as part of its interpretation plans for the future configuration of the site. In 2016 the project was awarded a grant of £10.7 mil- lion by the Heritage Lottery Fund. This put it well on its way to the project total of £19.3 million, to complete a range of modernisation works of which the floor repairs and underfloor heating represent only a part. Fund-raising for this ground-breaking, eco-friendly underfloor-heating challenge continues. Sarah Richardson and Daisy Nelson both completed the conservation of historic buildings MSc at the University of Bath in 2016. Sources Unpublished MSc dissertation by Daisy Nelson, Underfloor Heating within Churches: an opportunity from below? University of Bath, 2016 Talk by Fergus Connolly of Feilden Clegg Bradley, April 2016 Internal report, Abbey Hot SpringWater Heat Recovery Description of Works, BuroHappold Engineering, 2016 Internal report, Great DrainWeir Tests Record of Activities and Measurements , BuroHappold Engineering, 2016 www.bathabbey.org/ footprint www.thermaebathspa. com/the-spa/ natural-thermal-waters/ www.victoriansociety. org.uk/news/save-bath- abbeys-exceptional- victorian-interior/ www.bath-preservation- trust.org.uk/the-abbey Bath’s hot spring water fuels the eco-friendly heating system (Photo: Bath Abbey Footprint)