Yelcon Homes were awarded the contract to build 2,3,4 and 5 bedroom homes on the old Newburgh Engineering site at Bradwell Derbyshire.
The main building stone was specified to use Mandale Derbyshire Fossil Limestone extracted from the “once a week “quarry located in the Peak District National Park near Sheldon. The stone is extracted in the most eco-friendly was possible by way of Plug and Feather rather than using explosives, this means drilling holes in the bed and inserting metal feathers and driving metal plugs into the feathers to natural split the block away.
After this process most blocks are cropped into building stone and any suitable block that have high fossil content we send to our primary sawing facilities to cut into slab from 15mm thick to 100mm thick for use in our fabrication facilities. These slabs are then turned into kitchen worktops, vanity units, fire surrounds, fire hearths, internal and external floor tiles .
The Bradwell development also used our gritstone masonry for quoins , thresholds heads and cills . The process is similar we buy the gritstone block from Derbyshire quarries which gets processed at our primary saw facility into slabs from 100mm to 200mm . The slabs are then cut to size and our stone mason then works the stones to give a finished product. Gritstone is also processed into coping stones, Fire hearths, paving stones etc.
Once the foundations of the houses are put in the ground then the first lift begins to be constructed, consisting of internal block work and exterior building stone using Mandale Derbyshire fossil limestone.
Derbyshire Gritstone Quoins are laid on the corners along with door thresholds then up to bottom window level where the cills that have been processed from Derbyshire Gritstone are then put in place.
The cills usually have a slope on the front known as a weather to allow rain water to run away from the window frames . A drip groove or throat is then cut 20mm in from the underside front edge of the cill to allow the rain water to drip away from the stonework on the wall. The two pieces of stones to each side of the windows are called Jambs and are made from the same gritstone , in some instances there are centre stones called mullions these are usually in place for triple or quadruple windows.
The whole process repeats and the Gritstone window Jambs and heads are put into place as the build develops towards the second lift or second floor . This process carries on to the roof plate where the timber roof trusses are supported by the stone walls.
