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"No farewell to alms"
Restoration of St Anne's Hospital Almhouses did not conform to the 'repair as found' trend but still obtained EH funding.
Between St Lawrence's church and Appleby Castle in Cumbria is a low two-storey building with a simple arched opening in its red sandstone walls. The arch leads to a cobbled courtyard around which are set 13 almhouses and a private chapel. This is St Anne's Hospital, built in 1651 by the matriarch and philanthropist Lady Anne Clifford.
By the early 1990s the stonework of the almshouses had seriously decayed and the interiors were damp. The trustees appointed the architect Elaine Rigby and her structural engineer husband, Charles Blackett-Ord, to prepare a conservation strategy and structural report. Their approach to conservation is to use traditional materials and detailing and to upgrade the performance of the building where possible.
 
Although the local red sandstone, of which the almshouses are built, is relatively soft, the architect found that this was not the prime cause of the decay. About a century ago the walls had been stripped of their protective coating of lime render, following, in the architect's words, 'the fashion for rubble worship, still prevalent today'. The walls, especially of the lower storeys, had then been pointed in a hard cement mortar. Moisture, unable to evaporate through the joints, permeated the stone, depositing sulphate crystals which caused spalling.
On the east-facing garden elevation, the stonework was so decayed that re-rendering was the only option. The wall was consolidated, the joints galletted out and the whole was re- rendered in a pure lime wet-dash with pigmented limewash. The use of lime mortar is a craft-based skill, and the masons were given training on site, funded by grant aid.
The appearance of the newly rendered wall is dramatically different from before. Elaine Rigby explains: "Before treatment, the elevation was a busy, almost frenetic, assembly of stones, joints and windows; the render has formalised this arrangement allowing the architectural form to dominate once again."
On other elevations, the cement mortar pointing was removed and the walls repointed in traditional mortar of pure lime putty, goat hair and local aggregates mixed on site. Small areas of erosion were treated with 'ladder' repairs, a technique favoured by SPAB but here reinterpreted as sandstone slips built in pure lime mortar.
Many of the almshouse windows were heavy unweighted sash types, with openings which were difficult to use and too small to be used as fire escapes. These were replaced with easily openable casements with metal frames, fully draught-stripped and with leaded lights of imported cylinder glass.
Client: Trustees of St Anne's Hospital
Architect: Elaine Rigby Architects
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