Lincoln Bishops' Palace is one of the great lost buildings of England.
For seven centuries this was the principle residence of one of the most powerful figures in England, the Bishop of Lincoln.
Unfortunately, history has dealt rather roughly with the Bishops' Palace
but what survives now tells us that this building was not just important
it was also magnificent, and if we could see the building standing now
we would be able to see very close associations with the magnificent Lincoln Cathedral that stands immediately behind it
That's the reason why conservation at Lincoln Bishops' Palace is so important
because the fragments of the palace that survive are witnesses to a long and illustrious history.
We were very fortunate to have the input of the geospatial team
who developed the first, full 3D point cloud survey of an English Heritage site
to allow the crafts people on site to understand what we wanted to deliver.
One of the particular challenges of this site is that a lot of the spaces are open to the elements
and these were spaces that were originally designed to be internal spaces, not to be open to the weather.
Some of the historic stonework has sadly passed the age in which it can be retained
and in those exceptional instances we have to replace with new stone
but wherever possible we are trying to retain and conserve in place, the historic stonework.
One of the important challenges on ruins is making sure that the heads of walls remain impervious to rainwater
and around the site you'll see various techniques used, including soft capping,
that is actually installing turf on the tops of walls that stops the rainwater getting in.
This is a quite new technique that we've been trialling on a number of English Heritage sites over the last few years.
One of my jobs is to reveal the cracks in this arch
and to clean the cracks with water and to fill them with lime mortar.
And it's a sacrificial material so that water can flow through the mortar rather than the stone
and protect the stone for years to come.
What we've discovered is that what was thought to be good practice several years ago
we have a better understanding of the materials, the technologies and techniques
and a large amount of the work that we've done has been about reversing repairs that have been done previously.
Sustainable conservation is something we're developing within English Heritage
and it's basically to reduce ongoing maintenance post project.
We found during the works that there was two major issues
the Roman wall, the external of it was possibly collapsed, so we had to rebuild that
in the kitchen here, they put a concrete ring beam in, and that's caused problems, so we had to rebuild the arch.
This piece of work gives longevity to the project and post project in regards to maintenance and accessibility to the public.
We've been running weekly tours for English Heritage members and members of the general public, who will be interested in what's being done here.
Part of the project also is to look at the ecology that's here
and we have got bats here and one of them is where we've got the new arch in place
and we've left a void behind for the bats to re-enter.
We want to let the bats live here post project, so we've accommodated them.
We started in March '21 and we're going to be finishing in April '23, so it's been two years of continuous work.
It's been a labour of love for everybody here.