£10,000 to repair Shrewsbury's Lord Hill Column
Works to repair damage to Shrewsbury's Lord Hill Column will be carried out in the spring at a cost of £10,000.
An inspection of the column, which stands outside Shropshire Council's headquarters at Shirehall, was carried out earlier this week after small pieces of stone were found at the base of the structure.
The statue of Lord Hill on top of The Column in Shrewsbury was found to have been damaged and it is thought the stone had fallen from the statue of Lord Hill following recent high winds and freezing temperatures.
During the inspection, specialist stone masons found damage to some parts of the statue, including a number of fine cracks, plus weathering of the paint on left arm and right hand.
They also removed some loose masonry from The Column using a stiff bristled brush and dressed back the damaged stone using a chisel.
The inspection also confirmed that that The Column has suffered from localised ‘spalling’ – that is, crumbling or flaking of the Grinshill stone caused by freezing or wet weather.
The repair works are planned for May/June, subject to obtaining approval from Historic England.
It’s estimated that it will take two to three days to carry out the repairs, using a truck-mounted 50-metre-high mobile platform.
The work will cost approximately £10,000. In comparison, the repairs carried out in 2013/14 cost a total of £106,551.
Tim Smith, head of business, enterprise and commercial services with Shropshire Council said: “Lord Hill has clearly suffered at the hands of recent cold, wet and windy weather and is in need of some repairs, which we’ll carry out shortly.
"However, the good news is that the statue isn’t as badly damaged as it was back in 2013, nor as costly to repair. In addition, there is no immediate danger of any further debris falling from the statue within the short-term, so at this stage we don’t need to fence off The Column.”
Shropshire Council and the Friends of Lord Hill’s Column are currently working to secure the funding needed to replace the statue of Lord Hill with an exact replica made from its original material, coade stone.
