Conservation & Heritage Issue 52 Summer/Autumn 2026 - Flipbook - Page 34
The Finished Masterpiece
very difficult to manufacture the tiles so that that happens,
and it’s equally difficult to lay them and ensure everything
lines up as well as it can. The installation is key — and the
installation, in this case, has been absolutely super.”
“
The cumulative effect of five specialist contractors — each
working to the same exacting standard, each dependent
on the others — is a floor that has already moved its first
visitors to tears. Parishioners and cathedral staff brought in
for previews before the formal reopening have been, in the
words of Simpson project manager Neil Moss, “absolutely
thrilled… people in tears” when the floor has been revealed.
Usually you’d expect maybe 10 millimetres of tolerance
in a small domestic setting. In this building, much
more. But I think we’ve achieved far less than that, in a
much larger space. The installation is superb.”
Mark Haysom of Haysom Purbeck Stone visited the completed
space and addressed the ABM team directly: “You’ve spent a
lot of time working very hard on making it all look crisp, and
I think the outcome is very good. The contrast works well —
the two stones are not too harsh, and they work really nicely
with the furniture. Hopefully all as everyone intended.”
— Ross Whittle,
Senior Architect, Purcell
Ross Whittle of Purcell puts a number on it. In a project
of this size and complexity, a tolerance of 10 millimetres in
a domestic setting would be considered acceptable. ABM
Tiling achieved significantly less than that — across enormous
expanses of complex pattern, in a Grade II* listed building
with none of the geometric regularity of a modern structure.
The floor is simultaneously carrying underfloor heating
pipework, power and data cabling, and a series of floor boxes
serving different areas of the cathedral. “The coordination
of all of that is really phenomenally complicated,” Brigden
observes, “and the precision has to be really high. That relies
on really skilled craftspeople to bring it all together.”
For Ross Whittle of Purcell, the achievement is one of
temporal as much as physical craft: “The whole thing feels
like it’s been here since the Victorian period. The majority
of things in here are brand new within the last couple of
years, yet it feels as if it’s 160, 170 years old. We’ve managed
to transcend time.”
Chris Cox, walking the completed floor he supplied the
tiles for, describes what stands out: “I feel the most pride
looking at the team involved in actually making these tiles
— being able to pass on those traditional handmaking skills
throughout the team at Jackfield, and then to see them use
what they’ve learned to produce tiles of this sort of quality
and finish. That’s something anyone could be proud of.”
For Whittle, the craftsmanship on display goes beyond the
measurable: “If you’ve not got the attitude and ability of
the team installing the floor, you end up with a less-thandesigned result. But the attitude and ability of the team that
installed this far exceeds where we needed it to be, and it has
absolutely delivered. The quality is just consistent throughout
— there’s been no drop-off.”
The quality is exceptional. The finished product speaks
for itself of how ABM have performed. You just need to
look at the floor.”
— Mark Cregan,
Construction Director, Simpson (York)
Simpson construction director Mark Cregan has the last
word — and it is the simplest: “The finished product speaks
for itself of how ABM have performed. You just need to look
at the floor.”
Bespoke 25-panel bay patterns, border runs and coat-of-arms centrepieces had to
align continuously across the full length of the nave.
I
“Restoring the Glory”: a Victorian cathedral returned to its original splendour,
and the most sustainable of its kind in the country.
Conservation & Heritage Journal
32
I
