When Sarah Mullally officially assumes her post as the Archbishop of Canterbury next year, the first woman in the role will also be the first occupant of a newly refurbished Lambeth Palace. The palace, which has served as the leader of the Church of England’s home for 800 years, has just been renovated for the first time in 70 years.
The aim of the £40m refit was to restore and protect the palace’s historic features, but also to make it environmentally sustainable. Undertaken by the architectural firm Wright & Wright and funded by the Church Commissioners, the work involved cleaning 800 sq. m of historic stonework, the replacement of 1,450 sq. m of floorboards and more than 13,500 sq. m of plastering and painting—an area equivalent to two football pitches.
Sustainability improvements
On-site renewables now power the palace. The sustainability improvements include three air-source heat pumps, rooftop solar panels and the installation of energy-efficient double-glazed windows.
Lambeth Palace is a unique combination of the archbishop’s personal residence and a venue for intimate engagements with presidents and popes, as well as vast gatherings such as the 1,000-strong Lambeth Conference attended by bishops of the world’s Anglican Communion. It is also one of the most important heritage buildings in the British Isles, containing museum-quality artefacts.
Built in the early 13th century, the first Great Hall was visited regularly by Henry VIII. During the recent restoration of the 1660s-built hall, an oak timber fell from the hammerbeam roof, causing the architects to fear the whole roof might cave in. After consultation with the Church Commissioners, it was agreed the roof would be carefully restored as part of the restoration project.
The project was complicated by archaeological discoveries that peeled back layers of London’s history. Mark Stevenson, Historic England’s archaeology adviser, says the discovery of human remains, under what is now the new industrial kitchen’s deep fat fryer, was an unexpected surprise.
“We’re waiting on the carbon dating to come back,” he says. “It could be prehistoric, it could be Roman, it could be Saxon. I’m thinking it might be Saxon, but until we get the results we won’t know. But that was certainly quite the discovery.”
The remains had been preserved in a pocket of sandy silt near the former shore of the Thames. Most of the original burial had been disturbed by later construction over the years, leaving only a single piece in situ. The find underlines how close the medieval and earlier shoreline lay to the palace before Victorian embankment works pushed the river back in the 1860s.
A Tudor discovery
The redbrick gatehouse to Lambeth Palace is one of London’s finest examples of early Tudor construction. Known as Morton’s Tower, it was built in 1490 by Cardinal John Morton.
“What we found was there was an earlier phase to Morton Tower which no one knew about,” Stevenson says. “It opens up a whole new aspect of potential research to see what we can discover about what happened to this earlier structure.” Other finds included a medieval cesspit, the original palace walls, and impressions of tiled floors in Tudor-era mortar revealing the layout of the cloister.
Wright & Wright’s lead architect on the project, Stephen Smith, says that the masterplan for Lambeth Palace could be used as a blueprint for other heritage buildings. “The issue of climate change is becoming increasingly serious, and heritage buildings can play an important role in reducing their impact on the environment, not to mention saving on energy bills,” he says. The annual Lambeth Palace heating bill is expected to fall by 42%, from £52,000 to £30,000.
“Historic England have been following the project and want examples showing how sustainable retrofits can practically be done elsewhere,” Smith says. “If we can do it with Lambeth Palace, then it can probably be done anywhere.”
