Hall Conservation leaders in restoration

Brian Hall feels a strong personal connection to England’s ironwork heritage which he puts down to his upbringing.  Brian grew up near Coalbrookdale, the village in Ironbridge Gorge, Shropshire that was so central to the history of iron ore smelting. Brian recalls; “When I was growing up, it just seemed like everywhere around us there were things being made and bashed with hammers!”  Keen to see ironwork heritage get more attention, Brian helped form the National Heritage Ironwork Group, and chaired the organisation for a year. Its aims were to raise the standards of restoration and conservation of heritage ironwork across the UK, something it has been able to boost considerably.  

Brian’s own conservation ethos informs everything that Hall Conservation does, whether it is restoring a single picture frame or an entire building, as was the case with transforming the Old Marylebone Town Hall into the state of the art Sammy Ofer Centre for the London Business School. “Whatever the object we’ve been asked to restore is, it’s very important to look carefully at the  object, consider its history, its story, and keep in mind what other restoration repairs have been done. We always  try to be as unobtrusive as possible. We only intervene  when we have to, and then it’s very carefully and very considerably done.”

It’s easy to see that Brian loves his work and is fascinated by objects and their individual histories. “Every job is  different, and equally important. I was at a school open evening last week and someone asked me what I did. I found myself explaining that as a conservator you hold history in your hands and have to work out the best way of protecting it for the future.”    
    
In recent years the growing firm has worked at sites as diverse as The Royal Armouries, Tate Modern, Blenheim Palace, Battersea Power Station, and Hampton Court Palace, just to name a few. Hall Conservation is listed on ICON’s Conservation Register - the recognised source for finding professionally qualified conservator-restorers in the UK and Ireland.

Brian sees Hall Conservation’s strengths as being their flexibility and wide skillset. “We can do almost anything, and do it very well. From a tiny museum piece that might take a few days, to restoring a huge building for LBS over several years.”   

Hall Conservation’s work on the Sammy Ofer Centre was also shortlisted for an award. Thinking about the project, which took dozens of staff over two years to complete, Brian said, “We are successful at jobs like London Business School because we could adapt ourselves to do a real variety of tasks to a very high standard, where perhaps more traditional firms couldn’t. The items we restored included staircases, handrails, hit and miss filters, curtain rails, paintings, timber, cast iron panels, windows and bronze sculptures. As well as very practical things like upgrading the fire rating of doors while making sure that they remained respectful and in keeping with the heritage of the building.”

It’s clear that Brian is proud of what he’s created at Hall  Conservation, and of their impressive new, specially built workshops near the river. “We’re a close-knit team,” he says happily, “And we really care about doing a fantastic job for our clients.”