HALL CHAPEL, POLRUAN, CORNWALL

This study shows masonry consolidation work to a scheduled monument, carried out by Darrock & Brown Building Conservation during the Summer of 1997 using both hydraulic, and non-hydraulic lime mortars. It is a scheduled ancient monument in private ownership, having been conserved with the aid of funds from English Heritage. You are welcome to visit the site as defined by the fencing that surrounds the building.

The following is reproduced with grateful acknowledgement to English Heritage and the present site owners.

This building thought to date from the 14th century built of local coursed shale/slate with Pentewan stone dressings to openings. The turret with its bell chamber was added to the west wall at a later date. There is some evidence that the lean at the upper level is partly due to inaccuracies in its original construction

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Slides taken prior to project commencement show just how poor a condition the structure was in.  As is often the case, just in the nick of time, extensive consolidation works were won and awarded to Darrock & Brown.

These images do little in conveying the full extent of the decay to this unique building, the ground around the north wall (image #2) had been filled in to create a bank barn, with large scale excavations to the South thoroughly neglected (image #4) having served out its usefulness in the context of the Twentieth Century farming ethos.


The scale of the original chapel is probably the reason for its survival and there is evidence of at least seven phases of adaptation. The original roof, which survived until 1976, was based upon arch braced timber trusses. The principal trusses were of heavier section and bore moulded undersides with stops. Three lines of purlins were also moulded and stopped. A few principal timbers with grooves on their sides suggest that some bays of the roof, probably those above the altar, had ceilings. There was evidence of original internal plasters still surviving in the more sheltered zones.  These were simply left for nature to finalise as I suppose should rightly be the case in completing the cycle back to mother earth.

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The vast majority of the repair and building works (Inc Buttress’) were carried out using lime putty from Cornish Lime using native hydraulic lime on the slate wall caps (3) and for crack grouting. The first winter resulted in minor failures, due to frost, to the putty mortars with wholesale failure to the wall capping detail of salvaged scantle slates fixed with oak pegs into a native hydraulic lime bedding mortar and ridge cap. This was replaced using St.Astier NHL3.5 and is performing as expected with no trouble at all.