City & Country Group Helps Secure The Future Of Britain’s Architectural Heritage

Since 2008, award winning conservation and restoration expert City & Country Group has part-funded Essex County Council’s Traditional Building Skills courses, which teach builders and homeowners how to restore some of the country’s most treasured and iconic historic properties.

With skills and knowledge gaps affecting specialist workers and building professionals in the built heritage sector*, City & Country Group has pledged to fund the courses’ bursaries for a further two years, ensuring that vital the skills such as timber framing, flint walling, thatching and wrought ironwork are not forgotten.

Helen Moore, Managing Director at City & Country Group Residential, said: “At City & Country Group we invest a lot of time, money and training, in ensuring that we use traditional methods to restore some of the country’s most neglected heritage buildings and transform them into high-quality, modern homes with original features.”

Helen continues: “We couldn’t complete these restoration projects to our exacting standards without calling upon skilled artisans to breathe new life into these architecturally important buildings. However, it is not always easy to find people who are skilled in the building methods that are required. That is why we wholeheartedly support Essex County Council’s Traditional Building Skills courses through our sponsorship.”

One beneficiary of the scheme is Daren Sparrow, who was a modern builder with 20 years’ experience when Essex County Council introduced him to its Traditional Building Skills courses. Two City & Country-funded bursaries and nine courses later he has now switched full-time to working on heritage buildings.

Daren comments: “The bursary courses are very good and I really appreciate the fact that City & County Group sponsors this scheme. It has changed my life and I now run my own four-man company and have just taken on an apprentice. We are currently working on several restoration schemes in Essex and Suffolk, so the skills have been put to very good use.

“When I was involved in new-builds, you tended to have one trade; you go in as a labourer, electrician or plasterer. On the heritage side of things, you tend to have a mixture of skills. I can do carpentry and laying bricks and plastering, and my skills have been fine-tuned by the training courses I’ve attended.”

Rebecca Carter, Historic Buildings Education Officer at Essex County Council, comments: “Essex has some of England’s finest historic buildings, and these generous bursaries provided by City & Country Group allow even more people to learn how to use traditional methods to preserve them for future generations.”

City & Country Group has an outstanding reputation as ‘best in class’ for sensitive restoration and regeneration. The company undertakes detailed conservation and restoration of heritage buildings across the south east of England. Previous projects are as diverse as Old Saint Michaels in Braintree – a Grade II listed workhouse – now transformed into one, two and three bedroom apartments – incorporating many of the original features.

Whilst at The Galleries in Brentwood, an early Victorian Hospital, the original plans were painstakingly researched by the development team, including detailed drawings showing formal gardens and ‘airing courtyards’ designed for patients of the hospital. The buildings and gardens have now been reinstated for the benefit of residents as part of the extensive award winning landscape masterplan. Internally, City & Country Group has worked with the structure of the original building and in doing so has created unusal and highly innovative living spaces.