Heritage firm toasts Roman wall award

A ROYTON conservation company has won a prestigious award for restoration work on Chester’s Roman wall.

Maysand restored the city wall following the collapse of a 30-metre section of its walkway in 2008.

The painstaking restoration work, which was completed last year, earned Maysand the Heritage Award at the Centre for Construction Innovations (CCI) North-West Construction awards.

Maysand re-used as much of the original masonry as possible — each individual stone was taken down, numbered and catalogued to make sure it went back in the same place. Managing director Bryn Lisle said: “Chester city walls are a national monument of huge historical importance and so it was a very prestigious project and required all the specialist skills the team possesses.

“The award is a tribute to the painstaking effort put in by everyone concerned on the project. Throughout it there was a real sense of being involved in something very special.

“We worked very closely with archaeologists, engineers and English Heritage to provide a bespoke restoration of the Roman wall. We even had inspectors abseiling down many other parts of the wall to survey the full extent of the damage.”

It is the most complete circuit of a wall in Britain and originates from Roman times, although it has had Saxon and medieval rebuilding and extensions.

Maysand has worked on a wide range of restoration, regeneration and preservation projects at venues such as Manchester City Art Gallery, Dunham Massey, the Port of Liverpool Building and Chethams School of Music in Manchester.