Issue 48 AUG 25 web - Flipbook - Page 42
The Balmoral
Mark Styles, Managing Director of Thomann-Hanry® the façade cleaning and restoration experts,
looks at the need for heritage and commercial buildings to have façade surveys as part of a regular
maintenance programme and how Thomann-Hanry® conducted the façade survey for the Category
B listed hotel, The Balmoral in Edinburgh.
The Balmoral has been an icon of the Edinburgh skyline
since it opened its doors to paying customers back in
1902. Located in the heart of the city, it has cemented
its position as one of the great hotels of Scotland. The
building design was due to an open competition in 1895
by the North British Railway Company for a new railway
hotel adjacent to the newly rebuilt Waverley Station.
the façade. This would allow the hotels management
team a detailed understanding of all the key points of
concern which would need to be rectified during
the next round of maintenance and help support the
long-term conservation of this historic building.
The Balmoral is situated with main roads on two sides, a
steep staircase leading to Waverley Station on one side,
and, to the rear, the main glass and steel canopy of the
busy mainline station. This means traditional scaffolding
would have been both time consuming and expensive to
construct. Through using a mixture of MEWP
(Mobile Elevating Work Platforms) and drone,
Thomann-Hanry® was able to get up close to the façade,
inspect, and record any issues or areas of concern.
The 167-room hotel was tied to the railways from the
start, through 1948 and the nationalisation of the
railways, and it wasn’t until railway privatisation in 1983
when the hotel was taken into private ownership. The
hotel closed for major refurbishment work in 1988 and
was formally re-opened in June 1991 by Sir Sean Connery.
In 1997 the hotel was sold to the current owners – Rocco
Forte Hotels.
This approach also allows for more regular site inspections
to take place to monitor potential issues long before
they become significant structural problems. Regular
inspections are key to maintenance planning and allows
Thomann-Hanry® was instructed to complete a fully
detailed façade survey to check on the integrity of the
masonry, external woodwork and general condition of
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