Oldham Town Hall, Lancashire
The Project
The Grade II Listed Oldham Town Hall was named in Britain’s top ten most endangered buildings in 2009. The £37m redevelopment saw it transformed over three years into a cinema and restaurant complex. Ornate Interiors were instructed by Morgan Sindall to undertake the restoration and conservation of historic plasterwork including Lime plastering onto masonry walls, lath and lime plaster to ceilings and the reproduction of ornate plaster mouldings to match existing to over twenty rooms and staircases including the magistrates’ courtroom that was converted to the cinema. The existing in-situ mouldings were beyond repair so all new mouldings were manufactured in fibrous plaster to match the originals. Reproduced mouldings include cornices, fluted corbels, beam casings, column capitals, lighting trough to staircase, ceiling roses and roundels. The challenging highlight of the project was the reproduction and installation of fibrous plaster corbels for the courtroom. The existing corbels were solid casts and could not be installed onto the new acoustic rated ceiling and were too heavy and friable to be installed solely onto the walls. New fibrous plaster ones were made along with pre-manufactured back plates so the corbels could be installed onto the walls and not the ceiling.