Repair work to Spalding’s ‘nationally significant’ war memorial set for green light
Proposed cleaning and repair work to a ‘nationally significant’ war memorial look set to get the go-ahead.
Plans to spruce up the Grade I-listed building situated in Spalding’s Ayscoughfee Hall Museum & Gardens will be discussed by South Holland District Council’s Planning Committee on Wednesday (May 7).
“This Listed Building Consent is for proposed conservation / restoration works to all elements of the Temple of Remembrance, including cleaning and repair,” the planning officer’s report stated.
The work includes removing the roof coverings and removing the moss gently with a natural bristle brush, replacing unusable and broken tiles on the roof and in the eaves, filling in cracks to the ceiling and arches and cutting out damaged areas to the columns and plinth bases and piecing in new stones.
“The memorial is situated within the gardens of the separately Grade I-listed Ayscoughfee Hall, and the gardens themselves are listed as a registered historic garden,” the report added.
“This means that the site and its surroundings form such a concentration of extremely important listed property, that it likely forms the most sensitive and significant heritage setting within the South Holland Area.
“The architect, Edwin Lutyens was responsible for some 58 war memorials in both the UK and abroad, including the Cenotaph in Whitehall.
“The Spalding War Memorial is an outlier in Lutyens' works in that its Tuscan pavilion design is a precursor to the shelter buildings built in the cemeteries of the Western Front by the then Imperial (now Commonwealth) War Graves Commission for whom Lutyens was one of the principal architects.
“The principal elements of the memorial, the Tuscan pavilion and the Stone of Remembrance, stand within a memorial garden - an exceptional departure for Lutyens among his English memorials, marking the Spalding War Memorial as a unique and therefore extraordinarily important piece of nationally significant architecture.”
The report recommends the application - made by South Holland District Council - be approved.
