Belton's Stables project

After four years of planning and 18 months of construction work, the Stables Café is now open. Belton’s newly conserved and refurbished Café will offer you an entirely different dining experience within this beautiful historic setting.

During the early stages of the project, the original coach house doors were uncovered. But they were too fragile to be re-hung, so replacement doors were hand-crafted for the archway. The originals have been placed in architectural storage.

A time capsule was concealed within the fabric of the building and the decoy shoe discovered back in February 2019 was returned to the rafters. Having come across a hidden shoe, the Belton team assembled an eclectic mixture of items to place within a time capsule. Who knows when it will be discovered and what the finder will make of its contents?
 

This was the completion of making the Stables friendly to bats. The bat loft was separated with sheets of fire-resistant material from the rest of the roof space.
 

Five months of landscaping work took place in the stable yard. The work was to improve the look and feel of the area ready for new outdoor furniture in the summer.

The gardens team planted a new box hedge grown with cuttings from the Italian garden. Once established it will provide a beautiful green border to the gift-shop windows.

On lifting some floorboards contractors were surprised to find the original valley gutters servicing the historic roof. The lead is still in situ, with marks showing it was hammered by hand. We've recorded the find in detail and will cover it up again with the historic floorboards.

Large areas of lime plaster on the first floor were lost long ago. Work has started to reinstate the lime plaster on the walls.

The original cobbles have been lifted to allow for the installation of new drainage. Each cobble is numbered as it is lifted to ensure it goes back in exactly the same spot.

We’ve discovered a bricked-up window we were previously unaware of. It now opens into an area under the main stairs. The discovery changes our thinking on the original layout of the building and is leading to more research and investigation.

The construction of a new door opening uncovered an original wall from the 1680s. It shows techniques and materials typical of the period, a reed base and lime plaster surface. The wall has survived in remarkably good condition.

While clearing an area for the installation of the new lift a large tunnel was discovered that runs from the stables under the driveway. Three steps lead down into a narrow passage approximately five feet high. The passage had been filled with rubble, including fragments from a decorative urn and until now was hidden under a concrete floor.

The modern 1980s flooring was removed in the original 1680s stalls to reveal the original riverbed cobbles. It’s believed these date back to 1680 when the stables were built. If this is the case, then they are one of the oldest interior features in the building.

Builders discovered an intact York stone floor under a concrete floor in a room historically used as a tack room. This was a complete surprise. It was planned to keep the stone in-situ as the flooring for the new ladies’ toilets.

The descendant of a Belton groom visited and shared wonderful photographs of her family living and working in the Stables. Families lived on the upper floors until 1978 when Lord Brownlow opened the building as a Museum of the Horse.

Each elevation of the Stables is of exceptional significance, this includes the roof. From the high vantage point of the roof of the house it's possible to look down on the roof of the Stables. The new kitchen required extraction units to be located on or close to the building. Alongside Historic England it was worked out so the public looking down on the roof would never notice the extractors.

The hard-hat tours started in August 2016. These were the first tours for the public into the derelict spaces on the upper floor. Tours ran from Monday to Friday during term time until the end of October 2017.

Belton volunteers were trained to survey the historic graffiti on the outside and inside of the stables. Over 12 months, they painstakingly photographed and recorded each individual item.

After months of research, a full understanding of the changes that have affected the Stables was reached. This led decisions about the work to undertake.

James Brennan and James Edgar began the complicated process of unpicking the layers of history to tell the story of the building. They used archival evidence found at Belton, Lincoln and in the National Archives to produce a history of Belton’s stables.