Work has now started on the renovation of the stable yard. The contractor, R Durtnell & Sons, have been on site for 3 weeks now and the site has become a hive of activity. Part of the building has been scaffolded, the soft strip is complete and work has started on lifting the floors inside the building in order to lay insulation and underfloor heating.

Museum of London Archaeology are carrying out a watching brief on the project and one of their archaeologists was on site today to observe the work to lift the floors and to record anything of interest. So far they’ve discovered the foundations of an old wall, which is interesting but thankfully not interesting enough to halt the work.

The floors have to be lifted carefully, as we want to retain as many of the pavers as possible so that they can be relaid once the insulation and underfloor heating has been put in. The pavers would have originally been laid on sand or similar but unfortunately at some point in the past they were concreted into the ground. This has made it a lot harder to clean the pavers and although some of the concrete has chipped off quite well, others are too badly damaged to be able to reuse.