You may have seen this imposing building during your travels in the Great Haseley area of Oxfordshire. Sadly, it has fallen into neglect and the years have taken their toll. A major restoration project is now underway, aiming to return this historic building to its former glory. Follow the progress of the restoration in our blog....


The Restoration Team

Thursday 3 March 2011

Beam me up Scotty


No posting on here for a while, but we have been busy!

The top, or 'dust', floor was totally absent, so new beams and joists have been made at the workshop. Lifting of the large beams into the mill was originally going to be carried out with a crane. However, soft ground and access problems led to a decision to manually hoist the beams through the northern bin floor window. Cue strong, cold northerly wind !.....

The ends of the beams were pre-cut into splice joints. With the splice ends removed, this gave a short enough length of beam to manoeuver inside the tower.

Much re-hitching and shuffling later....the beams and splices were finally in place.
Next job will be to fit the joists into the housings which have already been cut.

Prior to this, we have also been fitting replacement lintels to both bin floor windows. This has involved a lot of masonry work, making good the stonework above the rotten lintels - much of which had fallen out.
North beam and splice in position prior to final fixing