So the brick drain will be recorded by our archaeologist and then carefully removed to make way for the underfloor heating.Ībove: The discovery of a brick drain in the floor of the central chamber.īelow: The Victorian Dairy at Easton Farm Park in Suffolk retains its central feature, sadly long lost at Cobham.Īnother discovery has been made in the dairymaid’s bedroom. Replacing this long lost feature would create an obstacle in the middle of the sitting room and the main route from the front door to the kitchen. Sadly, whatever was at Cobham Dairy has long gone, and no photographs or drawings have come to light to show what was there. We had seen before what looked like a drain outlet in the stone floor and this tallies with what would have almost certainly been some form of water or ice-holding feature which is a common feature of dairies. As expected, this has led to the discovery of a brick drain that leads from near the centre of the main chamber floor, and heads north, probably to some form of external soakaway. The sub-floor has been excavated to provide the necessary depth for under floor insulation and heating to go in, in due course. Inside the Dairy, the stone floors (or what remained of them) have all been carefully recorded, lifted and stored. This work will take place under the watchful eyes of the archaeologist, as new trenches are dug, and with the ecologists continuing to monitor the nearby badger setts. Installing the new main supply will involve shutting off the electricity to the whole of Cobham Hall School, which unsurprisingly needs to be done during the school holidays. We are currently working off generators, but hope to have mains electricity installed before the Christmas break. The team began work on site at the Dairy in mid-October and they are making good progress. We are equally delighted to have the excellent services of Higinio Gonzalez-Bello, Ginio to all of us, as our site manager again. This has been a long process, but thankfully by September all of the conditions had been discharged and we were able to complete the tendering process and agree a start date with our contractors.įollowing a competitive tendering process, we are delighted to be working once again with Colman of Canterbury as it was a very positive experience working with them on the restoration of St Edward’s Presbytery, next to The Grange in Ramsgate. We have also had to work around the presence of both bats and badgers (there are three active setts near the Dairy) which required a licence from Natural England. An unusually high number of these were pre-commencement conditions, meaning that they had to be discharged before work could start on site. These included archaeological evaluations, plasterwork, slate and joinery details and conditions concerning parking, access and refuse. Planning Permission and Listed Building Consent for the restoration of the Dairy were granted in February 2018, and came with a bumper set of 23 conditions. The main double height central chamber will be the sitting and dining room complete with a wood-burning stove.Ībove: New floor plan for Cobham Dairy. The south cloister will be enclosed to create the kitchen, with the north and west cloisters left open as originally. Our restoration of the Dairy will create a Landmark for two, with a bedroom and bathroom in the dairymaid’s east wing (her bedroom and scullery). This last section is currently no more than a footpath but will be upgraded just enough to enable Landmarkers to park their cars quite close to the Dairy. We have therefore needed to negotiate and agree three separate leases – with Cobham Hall School, with the National Trust which owns the track and with a local farming landowner who owns the final part of the route. The approach to the building, both for our contractors and for Landmarkers, will be via a track which was once the tradesmen’s entrance, rather than via the main drive. The building via a separate track through the woodland behind the building.Ĭobham Hall itself is now a girls' boarding school, and the Dairy sits close to the edge of the school grounds.
It is listed Grade II* and on the Buildings at Risk register, having long lain empty and derelict.Ībove: The Dairy has fine views across the grounds to Cobham Hall. Built in around 1795 by James Wyatt, one of the leading architects of the day, the Dairy is a Gothic-revival eye-catcher in the grounds of Elizabethan Cobham Hall.