Stow Maries is one of the last surviving Great War Aerodromes. Its special place as a historic marker not only in what it represents but also that it is still very much as it was originally built with little adaptation.
Lodge & Sons have been working there since November 2015in conjunction with Purcell – Colchester (Purcell | Homepage (purcelluk.com)). The work has been to stabilise and preserve many of the buildings on the site and prevent them from collapse.
All of the buildings are constructed out of half brick construction which has a metal band every 4 to 6 courses, which has caused the building to crack as the rust expands. These have been rectified by the removal of pointing to treat the metal and installing helibar ties grouted in to minimise lateral movement.
We also worked on the water tower, was one of the most interesting as we had to build scaffolding around and within the structure of the tower to hold up the water tank so that the four supporting piers could be taken down and re-built.
Many of the roofs on site are slated and many if not all were in a poor state of repair and letting in water. The workshop was completely re-roofed to the rear slope as it was leaking heavily and causing damage to the historic roof structures, which were repaired also. These works enabled the creation of a new workshop and storage area for the small army of volunteers, who undertake many small projects on the site to keep it well maintained and repaired for the future.
Officers Mess, this building has had a lot of work done to it in the past to make it usable for farming us as an open sided barn. One of the main tasks we were given on this building was to restore it back to its original layout and appearance. This involved the re construction of the Southern Elevation walls, installing doors and windows to match those on the rest of the building, where they had been removed to support agricultural use and storage.
In conjunction with this the roof timbers have been repaired and a new roof finish installed to replace the old asbestos cement sheeting which had aged and was leaking.
Around the site we have also undertaken a large amount of decoration. This has involved careful stripping and preparation, which has had to take into account that the original paints that were used would have been predominantly lead based and as such careful procedures put in place to protect the workforce and those around.
