Special Projects
Our Special Projects team is dedicated to providing complex heritage restoration schemes with the technical excellence and expertise they deserve.
1st Aug 2022
Supporting ‘Conservation on the Road’ with English Heritage 2022
We are thrilled to continue our partnership with English Heritage to support the ‘Conservation on the Road’ programme.
The 'Conservation on the Road' scheme aims to engage visitors at sites undergoing conservation projects around the country and inspire all generations to consider careers in the heritage and construction industries.
Like last year, the ‘Conservation in action’ van is travelling to various English Heritage sites throughout the summer until October, providing a host of hands-on conservation workshops for all ages.
Dates and locations
The van will be visiting English Heritage sites at Hardwick Old Hall: 8–12 August, Lincoln Medieval Bishops’ Palace: 22-25 August and Orford Castle (dates tbc).
For more information, visit the English Heritage website.
It is a privilege for Sir Robert McAlpine Special Projects to support English Heritage with this initiative again this year, and continue to promote traditional skills across the country. ‘Conservation on the Road’ introduces visitors to the heritage work that is needed for the preservation of our historic buildings. It has the potential to inspire the next generation of skilled trades and perfectly aligns with our vision of proudly building Britain’s future heritage.
Mike Coleman Operations Director, Sir Robert McAlpine Special Projects
A visit to Belsay Hall, Castle and Gardens
Our Carlisle Citadels project team, together with Sir Robert McAlpine Special Projects, attended a workshop at Belsay Hall, Castle and Gardens recently. The Hall is currently undergoing crucial conservation work to restore the building for years to come. It was the perfect opportunity for the team to experience some hands-on heritage work.
The visit included an introduction to Belsay and insights into the current conservation project, a tour of the building and a chance to take part in some of the activities offered by the ‘Conservation in action’ van.
Mark Robson, Sir Robert McAlpine Project Manager, said:
“This visit was insightful and very hands on. I think it really helped reinforce the project team’s understanding around the level of planning and advanced consultation with English Heritage which is required when you are restoring historic buildings. Much of what we saw and discussed during the visit has a large overlap with the works which are planned to take place on the Carlisle Citadels Grade 1 and 2 listed assets. This is going to be a very exciting project and we are all very proud to be part of it.”
The English Heritage conservation van
this is a really exciting opportunity
for English heritage for the first time
we're going to be able to share some of
the nuts and bolts behind what it takes
to conserve our collections and
landscapes
we're at dover castle today where we're
launching our conservation and action
van and we're really excited that we can
invite visitors to come and get hands-on
with conservation and start to
understand the work that goes behind the
scenes to care for our monuments and
collections across England
so the conservation action van is a
great innovation what it allows us to do
is to bring a whole series of activities
and talks and fun things to do to lots
of sites around the country where we're
doing active conservation work
we have a range of really practical
activities where visitors can get
hands-on and start to understand some of
the concepts behind
the conservation about our properties
and collections and landscapes
we've designed them in a way for both
families young and old to
actually interact and think about the
decisions behind the conservation of our
monuments so we have
things like
masonry conservation you know how do we
carve stone what's the process behind
that and our visitors will be able to
actually do a bit of it on on some
practical examples and get insight into
that that careful thinking and craft
skills that are behind
the conservation of our monuments
caring from our historic properties is
hugely challenging and very expensive
and we're really lucky to have the
support of Sir Robert McAlpine
supporting the conservation ban is about
raising the profile of traditional
trades it's about maybe making teachers
think that construction is a way forward
that you can get a career in
construction
and whether you're an architect
whether you're a stone mason
whether you're into graphic design
construction and heritage can be a route
forward for you
we're doing conservation in action it
helps me to understand more about how
the castle was built and it's really fun
it was very fun yeah restoring
everything and cleaning really opened up
my view of how much actually people put
into this
it's a hands-on activity so kids love it
and they learn flow through doing things
and the more they know around the better
is for them so they actually can find a
career
just through play
what we really hope visitors take away
from all this is a real sense of why
conservation
needs to take place i mean what we do is
is a it's a huge challenge
caring for 420 properties throughout the
country we're always having to run
projects across lots of different
properties but as a charity we really
want to make sure that people understand
what we do that we we connect with them
we tell them the story
we involve them in in the work that
we're doing and how to give them a true
sense of what English heritage is all
about which is about bringing history to
life and bringing places to life through
great conservation
over the next five years we're going to
travel our conservation van across
England and visit our sites where we're
doing major conservation work keep an
eye out for it and come down and have
some fun with these activities and and
learn about what it takes to look after
our wonderful collection of monuments
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