CLEANING AND REPAIR OF TOMBS AND MONUMENTS

Project overview
The Church of St Peter and St Paul has an impressive twelfth-century font of Norman origin and other precious historic monuments. Cliveden Conservation was honoured to be commissioned to conserve four of its medieval tombs, two effigies of knights, a wall monument and a white marble seventeenth-century urn.

Summary of the conservation work carried out
Cliveden Conservation recorded and compared the condition of the objects to determine any variations outlined in the previous conservation report before commencing any remedial treatment. Cleaning trials of the alabaster and polychrome was then carried out to decide on appropriate cleaning materials/solvent and methods for each object.

Each of the objects were carefully cleaned, and areas of loose lifting paint were consolidated. Loose or cracked pointing was also removed and repointed with an appropriate lime-based mortar.

Further repair work was required for the chest tombs to stabilise the disaggregation of the stone and impart strength to some of the areas: one of the chest tombs needed to be dismantled and rebuilt. Crude repairs which were unstable were fettled back and remodelled. Loose sections were also repaired and consolidated.

The seventeenth-century marble urn and pedestal also needed to be dismantled to carry out repairs. Loose mortar was removed along with remnants of pointing before the slate cladding was re-bedded and the surbase refixed into position with a stainless steel cramp. Ferrous fixings were also treated.

Paint samples were taken from the effigies before consolidating the polychrome using a variety of techniques. One of the effigies required repair work to fix loose sections and cracks.

Results
The project involved a complex programme of conservation work which was successfully carried out by a team of four.