A two-and-a-half-year programme of conservation repairs has now begun at Clandon Park. Using craft techniques rarely seen today, the repairs will help to preserve the fire-damaged structure for generations to come.
This major conservation work follows debris clearance, research and investigation, and essential maintenance. A small team of expert brick and stone conservators have set to work investigating the most sensitive way to repair damage in the surviving external walls, chimney stacks and balustrade.
In the first phase this will focus mainly on an area in the south-east corner of the house. Thousands of new bricks will be made by traditional family brickmakers over two years which carefully match the colour and texture of those made by local brickmakers 300 years ago. Repairing this damage is a crucial step in our long-term project to bring the house back to life.
At the same time, we’re fine-tuning the masterplan for Clandon, working with experts in areas from fire safety and sustainability to programming and accessibility. One of the project’s key principles is collaboration, so we’re talking and listening with people as we hone our designs and ideas. We’ll be sharing our proposals with you as soon we can.
Explore the house
Often a project like this happens behind closed doors, but we’ve kept the house open for people to explore as we work on our plans. Keeping a building safe and accessible after a major fire is no mean feat but we’ve slowly revealed more and more of Clandon Park and welcomed over 75,000 visitors since the fire.
In 2021, from March until the end of September, the garden at Clandon Park will be open to provide a small green space for our community. You can visit every day between 11am and 4pm. There’s no need to book a ticket, but parking is limited. The visitor reception building and toilets will remain closed on garden only open days. We ran weekly guided tours of the house between May and August 2021. These tours have now finished for this year but we hope to able to repeat the experience for those wanting to visit the house, beginning in spring 2022.