Unfortunately, the site and its contents are at significant risk of being lost and have quickly deteriorated over recent years to become unusable for safety reasons.
There is now however a glimmer of hope since Taunton and West Somerset Council took ownership of the site in 2020. Since then, huge efforts have been made to raise awareness and ultimately funding to preserve this industrial gem. The first phase was to rid the site of tonnes of asbestos that ran throughout every building. In doing so, experts could safely enter for the first time in many years to assess the condition and make urgent recommendations for the buildings repair. These investigations highlighted a number of areas that were on the brink of being lost forever and instigated a round of much needed funding to be allocated to the site through Historic England. Once the funds were in place Corbel were approached to work alongside the Council, engineers, architects and other experts to decide on the best course of action to safeguard three of the most precarious buildings on the site.
Built of thin brick or stone walls the buildings are sited directly adjacent to the river Tone, in many places the roof structures had collapsed inwards and in all instances what remained was heavily propped to slow further loss. In terms of logistics, safety for the team and the sheer state of disrepair of the building was Corbels biggest challenge to date.
In order to tackle such a challenging project, we had to put careful thought into how we would safely access and stabilise the works, therefore multiple meetings were had between our site team, the scaffold designer and the scaffolders themselves. To get this wrong would not only compromise safety, it would also put the building at significant risk and prevent us from executing the works in a logical manner. The biggest headache was the longest side of the building which sat directly over the river Tone, we could not site scaffold into the river for environmental reasons and we could not tie to the building due to its poor structural stability. To get around this we came up with the idea of utilising the internal birdcage access scaffolds as ballast in order to beam through the six windows overlooking the river, the beams were then laced together and used as a cantilever to scaffold from, to reach the higher levels of this elevation.
With access resolved we could begin on the stabilisation and repair. First we stripped the whole roof cover to remove as much weight as possible from the structure, timbers were then further propped in place to allow further access to assess their condition. Following this a full survey of each individual timber was undertaken to inform of their long-term structural suitability, and allow the project engineers to formulate their schedule of structural repairs.
Upon receipt of this we carried out exact costings to ensure the budget was controlled and embarked on a 4-5 month scheme of structural timber repairs to the entire roof structure. These repairs / replacement’s ranged from small rafters to 11 meter long structural beams and in-situ structural scarfs some 300x300mm in section that had to be weaved into place through the access scaffold and sea of props. In all, there were approximately 65 significant structural repairs to the principal timbers alongside the hundreds of more general repairs to rafters, valleys hips and the like. The skill of our carpentry team is a joy to behold and the sheer scale of task that was delivered has left all visitors in awe!
Upon completion of the structural repairs, we commenced with waterproofing of each roof. Using a combination of new Welsh slate and lead the roofs were expertly recovered to exacting standards by our roofing team, again the results of this exercise are stunning.
What has been achieved in saving this series of buildings is nothing short of remarkable, given that many had written them off before the project started. Without the great team ethic and focus adopted by each person, it is highly likely that the project would not have been delivered – let alone to the high standards achieved and all within the original budget. With this part of this industrial gem now saved for another century, there is still a mammoth task ahead for the restoration of the complete Toneworks complex.
Client: Taunton and West Somerset Council
Architect: Architectural Thread
Engineers: Integral Engineering
Duration: 8 months
Project Value: £600,000