Now it’s Baasing House!

 

New arrivals at Basing Grange.

Do a ewe-turn, girls, and check out the Great Barn!

Update 9th March 2011

Until mid April visitors to Basing House will see work under way on the final stage of the development project,  namely

A new footbridge providing improved access to the “citadel” area with its Norman castle remains (bailey and ringwork bank) and the remains of the Tudor house.  

 

The Bothy Tearoom

 

The “Bothy” was built in the late 19th century and in 1906 became the original site museum.  The carved stone head you see above is one of the many found at Basing House which which are mounted on the walls inside the Bothy.

Both the bridge and the tearoom will open in early April. See our website www.basinghouse.org.uk  for more news  about the  tearoom opening and forthcoming events.

Update 8th March 2011

Conservation, Adaptation and Access improvements   

Giles Pritchard RIBA, Senior Historic Buildings Architect for Hampshire County Council and the project architect and designer for Basing House has kindly provided the following summary of the works he and his team have carried out carried out over the past year.  

Basing House is designated as a Scheduled Ancient Monument and contains a number of Grade II listed buildings. The former Grange Farm site, now called “Basing Grange”, contains a collection of Grade II listed farm buildings along with the Tudor Great Barn, which is listed Grade I and a Scheduled Ancient Monument.

Following a successful grant award from the Heritage Lottery Fund, improvements have been made to Basing House to provide better facilities for visitors to this significant historic site.

The adaptation and alteration of the existing buildings has been carried out with minimal impact on the historic fabric. New interventions are clearly distinct from original elements and a soft touch has applied on all the buildings to ensure that their character and history is respected.

Repairs to the fabric of the buildings have been undertaken using traditional methods and materials such as lime mortars and handmade brick and tile. Repairs to joinery were undertaken in a way that retained as much historic fabric as possible and using scarfing-in repairs, partnering of joists and rafters to provide additional strength, and stitching and re-pointing brickwork wherever necessary. 

Basing Grange

An area immediately inside the site boundary, beside the  River Loddon, now marks the arrival point for visitors to the site and this is the location for views across to Basing House.  A new gravel path has been laid alongside the fishponds and sweeps across the paddock to the north door of the “Little Barn”, adjacent to the Great Barn.

This 18^th century barn now houses the visitor centre with reception, gift shop, refreshments and an introductory exhibition. The old corrugated metal roof has been replaced with hand-made tiles, the existing decayed timber doors to the north have been replaced with new oak doors to match the existing, and new glazed doors have been fitted within the existing opening to provide some environmental control to the barn. A matching screen with glazed doors has been fitted to the doors in the south elevation.

The existing modern concrete floor has been removed and replaced with a limecrete slab in a brushed finish and the central area between the main doors has been laid with handmade brick paviors. The existing services have been stripped out and the lighting replaced with a more sympathetic design, with fittings located at high level along the eaves line. A full fire detection and intruder alarm system has been fitted, radio controlled to avoid additional cabling.

The old stable block has been adapted to create a new learning centre, new public toilets and a small plant room. The internal modern block work partitions have been demolished to open up the space for the learning centre. The existing concrete floor has been removed and replaced with a limecrete slab incorporating under floor heating coils and finished with an oak boarded floor on battens. The ceiling has been lined with insulated plasterboard, leaving the principal trusses and purlins exposed.

The works to the Great Barn have been minimal so that the vast open space is retained. Some minor repair work has been done to the 16^th century roof structure involving some scarfing-in timber repairs in new oak and the introduction of some stainless steel bolts and plates to strengthen joints where necessary.

The existing chalk floor has been repaired by scraping off the built-up layer of mud and muck and consolidating the remaining chalk by lightly scarifying the surface and topped using rammed chalk with a hydraulic lime binder. The remains of the brick footings that once supported the threshing floor between the  western doors have been carefully repaired and the spaces between them infilled with limecrete incorporating the large flint rubble recovered from these areas.

To the east end of the building, the modern concrete floor has been removed and replaced with rammed chalk floor. The remains of a brick threshing floor between the eastern doors have been incorporated in its reinstatement using new hand-made bricks. The existing cement render to the walls at low level has been left as its removal would cause damage to the brickwork.

 

Garrison Gate, Basing House remains and the museum

Access for the disabled has been improved on the Basing House site. The tarmac approach path leading through Garrison Gate has been re-laid and a metal handrail provided up to the former canal bridge.  The toilet block has been comprehensively re-planned and refurbished to include an improved accessible WC.

A new accessible WC has been provided on the lower ground floor level of the museum in space formerly used as a storeroom.  The existing doorway to the exhibition, a modern doorway cut into the 1970’s extension to the Lodge building, has been widened to provide the necessary clear opening. The external concrete ramp has been replaced with an inclined gravel path re-graded with a gradient of 1:21. The ramp is independent of the adjacent historic wall.

Extensive repairs and consolidation of the brickwork to the ruins have been undertaken. The Tudor Orchard Wall, a significant retaining wall of two distinct periods of build, has been carefully repaired. This has involved tying back of the later brick facing and rebuilding sections that had previously collapsed. A new brick coping has been rebuilt based on evidence of the remaining wall top, to provide protection from water ingress to the wall below.

Project Update 23 September 2010

   

What a month it’s been!   

Our heartfelt thanks go out to the large number of people whose energy, commitment and enthusiasm helped to achieve the following milestones over the past few weeks.  

• 14th August  Basing House re-opened after its £2.3 million refurbishment
• 28th August  New museum exhibition opened
• 28-30th August  the Battle of Basing. Thousands of people came to Old Basing at the bank holiday weekend to enjoy this spectacular event  featuring the Sealed Knot re-enactment society
• 11th-12th September  Basing House was a popular destination for the National Heritage Open Days event
• 15th September  a Special Viewing was held for funding partners, stakeholders and supporters of the development project (photo below) 
• 17th, 21st, 23rd September  first schools visits since re-opening     

 

 

 So what’s next?   

Work has not finished yet.  By next Spring Basing House will boast a new footbridge spanning the western ditch of the Norman bailey and sailing over the excavated remains of the western gatehouse to the Tudor house (illustrated right), and a new cafe too, The Bothy Tearoom, which will be run by a local catering firm.  

Looking a little further ahead, plans are being drawn up for exciting new themed play facilities for our younger visitors.  

On a sadder note, fundraising has begun for a programme of conservation for the Tudor house, which suffered greatly from the exceptionally severe frosts experienced last January.  Work is already under way but to complete the task and prevent further damage to this  important scheduled monument  more resources will have to be found.    

 

Upcoming events  

• Saturday 2nd October  Geocaching day
• Saturday 9th & Sunday 10th October Mary Rose Weekend
• Saturday 30th October Halloween Ghost Walk!

    

And finally  

Please visit our website or Facebook page regularly for more information about events. You can see more  pictures and video of the Battle of Basing weekend there too,  and much more.  And don’t forget that new volunteers are always welcome! 

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Facebook to keep up to date with all the latest news and information about the Battle of Basing!

Find us at www.facebook.com by searching for the Page, ‘Basing House’.

Find out more about our event on www.facebook.com on the Event page for ‘Basing House’.

Don’t forget to invite your friends and family too!

Only 4 days to go!!

At 10am on Saturday 14th August Basing House will re-open to the public for ‘preview fortnight’ – which means that in the run up to our big celebration event on Bank Holiday weekend we will still be very busy adding finishing touches here and there (like the museum) but there will still be plenty to see!

With only a few days to go now the team is working flat out to get ready for Saturday. These photos taken in the past few days give a good sense of just how busy it is. It may look chaotic, but it’s organised chaos!

Basing Grange 10 August

An old friend! 10 August

Visitor Centre 4 August

Reception desk 6 August

Last week people living nearby were invited for a “sneak preview”. Over 100 people came and we are pleased to say their response was overwhelmingly positive. Here are a couple of the comments received:

“Thank you for showing us around! It was lovely to get an idea of how it will all look and operate once Basing House opens to the public. It really looks fantastic and we are looking forward to visiting again after it has officially opened.”

Residents' preview 5 August

“Hi – just to say how very much we appreciated all the efforts the ‘TEAM’ put into tonight’s pre opening tour for local residents. The transformation of the ‘Great Barn’ to a useable building once again is an inspiration in these days of gloom – may we wish you every success for the future.”

We hope to see YOU at Basing House soon!!

The Battle of Basing

Saturday 28 to Monday 30 August

From 10am-5pm

Join us to celebrate the reopening of Basing House with an exciting event, bringing our Civil War history to life for all ages.

More details on our website: www.basinghouse.org.uk

 

Civil War Soldiers (members of the Sealed Knot) clash in battle

Project Update 25 June 2010

Apologies to all our readers that it’s been so long since the last update. With only 7 weeks to go before Basing House re-opens for “Preview fortnight” on 14th August this is an incredibly busy time for the team. The good news is that although there are a thousand and one things still do the project remains on track.  

New Operations Manager joins the staff

The big news is that Basing House now has its new Operations Manager! We welcome Claire Capel into her new post and wish her every success. We look forward to working with her. Claire will do her best to meet as many local residents as she can in the coming weeks.   

Construction and Conservation

On the construction side highlights of the past few months have been the completion of the new tile roof on the Little Barn and all of the ‘first fit’ electrical work, the laying of limecrete floors in the Learning and & Community Centre, the completion of the toilets at Garrison Gate and the museum, and the start of work on the new museum space. Villagers will have noticed too that our new tourist road signs have been installed.   

New roofs…

...and new floors…

Services

From next week and for several weeks there is likely to be some disruption to traffic on The Street and Basing Road while a new broadband service for the village is installed, and also the new road crossing at Garrison Gate and water supply for Basing Grange. The County Council will do it all it can to minimise disruption but ask residents to be patient while this essential work is carried out, or find alternative routes.   

Volunteers

An introductory meeting for prospective volunteers was held on Saturday 8th May, which was attended by 21 people including some existing Friends of Basing House.  

If you wish to find out more about sort of activities that you might become involved in as a volunteer and the training that we can offer please send in your details via the form on the ‘Future Plans’ page of our website.  There will be another introductory meeting at Basing House on 10th July.  Induction for new volunteers will start at the beginning of August.   

Marketing

Behind the scenes the main emphasis now is on putting the marketing plan into action. Look out for changes to our website very soon. There will be lots of new information on display, for example about our new opening times, admission prices, and forthcoming events.   

A new tourist sign

Interpretation & Exhibition

Exhibition consultants PLB Projects are putting the final touches to all the graphics for the site information points and these will go into production very soon. Also progressing well is preparation of the sound track for the Great Barn audio-visual presentation and of the site models. Meanwhile the Museum Service’s own exhibition team is forging ahead with putting together the new museum display.   

August Bank Holiday – a date for your diary!

The centrepiece of the celebrations to mark our re-opening will happen on August Bank Holiday weekend, when there will be whole series of exciting things going on both on-site at Basing House and on Basingstoke Common next door.  Highlights will be two magnificent (and fierce!) Civil War battle re-enactments performed by The Sealed Knot telling the story of the long sieges and final dramatic downfall of Basing House to Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentary army on the fateful morning of 13 October 1645.   

The Sealed Knot in action!

Look out for more information coming on our website shortly.

Community Archaeology team at work

Community Archaeology team at work

Originally uploaded by basinghouse

The community archaeology dig at Basing House has now finished and we’re all exhausted!

Photos of finds and the great Young Archaeologist’s Club day that we had will go up here soon.

Don’t forget to click on this image to go to our Flickr page to see more photos!

Community Archaeology Excavations are Underway at Basing House

Clearing the previous year’s excavation site

Originally uploaded by basinghouse

Basing House is closed until later Summer this year, but this hasn’t stopped us from getting stuck in to the annual Community Archaeology Dig.

Excavations began this week on site, with hard work being put it by all involved to begin with clearing the previous year’s excavation site. We have had a glorious couple of days with much sun shine.

The Hampshire County Council Archaeology team and Basingstoke Archaeology Society have been organising the work, and many thanks go out to them for what promises to be a fascinating project.

More details about the objectives of this year’s dig and information about the excavations as they are carried out will be published here first, with an update of the final findings being uploaded to our Basing House website after the dig has ended.

There are lots more photographs of the work being done on site at our Flickr page – www.flickr.com/photos/basinghouse

The excavations on site will continue until the 6th June. We are always happy to have as many people as possible involved in the dig, but please remember that the site is not currently open to the public, so if you would like to help out with the excavations please contact us first using the form on this page (look in the right-hand column) and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.