Painstaking architectural detective work at Hengrave Hall, a Tudor mansion near Bury St Edmunds, has revealed a colour scheme dating back to the reign of Elizabeth 1 and led to the perfect restoration of a dramatic architectural feature above the main entrance to the historic house.
Hengrave Hall's oriel (or bay) window is equal in splendour to similar features at Windsor Castle and Hampton Court. Its restoration by a team of specialist paint conservators, glaziers and stonemasons, led by Norwich architects, Purcell Miller Tritton, was celebrated with a special thanksgiving ceremony on 4 May arranged by the Hengrave Community of Reconciliation who now own and run the building as a retreat and conference centre.
The italianate oriel window above the entrance doorway comprises a carved frieze of cherubs and heraldic shields. A lack of documentary evidence meant that work to establish the original colour scheme had to start literally from scratch. Over 200 paint samples were carefully lifted and the pigments identified and dated. The results revealed eight different paint schemes over 200 years, yet there was just enough of the earliest decoration left for specialist conservators to be confident about the colours used by the Elizabethan craftsmen. During the two month restoration project, modern acrylic paints were matched to these pigments resulting in an authentic restoration of one of the finest architectural features in the area.
Hengrave Hall was built in the early 16th century by Thomas Kytson, a wealthy wool merchant. It was privately owned until 1952 when The Sisters of the Assumption used it as a girls' boarding school. In 1974 it was taken over by the Hengrave Community of Reconciliation - a registered charity whose aims are the reconciliation of the divided churches and the divided peoples throughout the world. The Community has a particular mission to reconcile young people from divided countries in Europe. The thanksgiving service in Hengrave Church on Friday May 4 was a celebration of the conservation work and was attended by Trustees and members of the Hengrave Community as well as many of the expert craftspeople directly involved with the project.
