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Rebuilding a medieval castellated church tower proved a test of high level skills for the masons of PAYE Stonework and Restoration. Perched on scaffolding soaring 75 feet over the Isle of Thanet, the company’s craftsmen hand carved brittle ragstone blocks recapturing the traditional skills of an unmechanised age.
St Nicholas at Wade was built in a mixture of styles, with some of the earliest parts dating back to the twelfth century. The interior boasts exceptionally high quality medieval carving, echoing contemporary decorations in Canterbury Cathedral.
The South Western tower on which PAYE craftsmen have been working was described by the project architects, Thomas Ford and Partners, as magnificent. The tower’s lower section dates from about 1310, but the upper is a slightly later addition thought to have been built as a navigation aid in the days when Thanet really was an island. This roughly constructed top is walled with heavily mortared round flint pebbles, originally collected from a local beach, filled with rubble and capped with Kent ragstone copings.
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St Nicholas at Wade church where PAYE msons have rebuilt the castillations, using salvaged flints and new hand worked ragstone
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Despite late Victorian attempts at rebuilding, the upper two thirds of this spectacular tower had suffered from hundreds of years of severe coastal exposure. The surveyors discovered disintegrating coping, missing embrasure stones and some castillations starting to lean. In fact, lumps of masonry had actually detached and crashed to the ground.
Before any repairs could be undertaken the complex interlocking matrix of external stones had to be recorded in detail. Any stone scheduled for repair or replacement was identified with its own number. As the tower top was painstakingly removed all the materials, including the original rubble fill, were stored for reuse.
Replacement ragstone copings, embrasure and merlon stones were prepared off site. Once hoisted into position at the top of the tower all the parts of the new castellations were hand crated to match the original exactly.
Laboratory testing was used to produce a perfectly replicated mortar mix for re-laying the medieval flints, Incorporated within this mix were oyster shells which had to be sourced from the nearby coastline.
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