About Us...
Management
The company is owned and managed by Peter Ward. Most of the building team are also Directors and Shareholders. The company brings together a diversity of skills in the form of a team of craftsmen. It is the intimate knowledge that these team members have of each others skills that allows the group to function quickly and efficiently in completing projects. One of our key competitive advantages is the fact that the managers and owners of the company are capable of physically doing almost every job that they ask of the trades team, and can offer help and alternative solutions to the problems which often occur.
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| Pete... at a gathering of fellow mineralogists. He sells spare minerals and crystals when he's not fixing houses.. |
Brought to his knees, after a long weekend of digging, mine conservation, rebuilding the mine office (see walls behind!) with help from Soot the dog, who digs the holes for the timbers, and wears her own mining lamp! |
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| The only known picture of Pete actually at work on a building site - note tape measure, dirty jeans and piece of wood in his hand... |
Pete - shaft-sinker extraordinaire. The shaft is about 30' deep, sunk in the quest for fluorite crystals in the Weardale, Co. Durham. He's even wearing a Heritage-House jersey... |
Peter Ward
Business manager. Responsible for overall management and paper pushing! Peter has considerable experience in the business world. After University In the early 1980's, he ran a farm contracting and building company, but sold this when he moved to Australia. 4 years running gold mines followed, before setting up a mining software development company. This became one of the largest mining and farm software companies globally. He sold this to return to England in 1999, to restore period properties. In his spare time Peter maintains links with the mining industry and collects mineral and gem specimens. He has two horses, and works with them whenever he can.
Training
Training is vital. All of our craftsmen and staff are conservation trained, and everyone is working towards some form of qualification in conservation / restoration related disciplines.
Technology
Our office is equipped with the latest in drafting (Autocad) and project management (MS Project Pro) software and equipment. All of our key people are networked with project data on their laptops to ensure they are kept constantly up to date with project details, costings and schedules, whether they be in the office, at home, or on-site.
Manufacture and Supply of materials
We have close associations with a number of manufacturing workshops, to customise joinery products at cost effective pricing, as well as ensuring timely completion of sub-contracted manufacture. We maintain our own workshop in Shropshire, and manufacture fittings ourselves, as well as processing and restoring reclamation materials. We work together with Dudmaston Sawmill to provide supplies of green oak for timber framing.
Peter's computer knowledge is never far away - every job undertaken is carefully photographed at every stage, and clients receive these in digital format on completion of the work. We consider this a vital service, as structural detail of a build is lost behind plasterwork and finishes, and subsequent structural investigations are never able to determine the full extent of a restoration project. On a number of occasions this attention to detail has resulted in a higher sale price being achieved for significant properties. Typical such photos are shown below:
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Mark Poole
General Manager - Mark is responsible for the day to day running of our jobs. He has a family background of painting and decorating stretching back over three generations. He has nearly completed his Plumbing studies, and will shortly be CORGI registered. Mark handles all of our plumbing and heating installations, which allows us a much greater degree of flexibility when working on tricky restoration jobs. Married, his wife Emma just had their second baby, so he's usually at home by 6pm to do the evening feeding! He's also very into Tropical Fish - which for me is one better than watching paint dry, but apparently its fun to watch them having babies... |
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Ryan Braden and Steve Carrington
Our conservation Apprentices. We're very proud of these two - they disappear for days on end to remote parts of Shropshire and the Border counties to restore inglenook fireplaces and re-point all manner of strange buildings. All we ever hear of them is vague reports from clients about 'those two lovely lads' who eat lots of strange things from local chip shops, and complain bitterly that Peter hasn't ordered them enough Heritage House T shirts and Polo shirts. They're also very good at building stone walls, and lime rendering things (including themselves) They're also studying hard, doing various courses - their next one is in Scotland at the Scottish Lime Centre in March (If the nice lady in the B&B will have them again...!) Steve plays a lot of Rugby, and Ryan..... well..... we don't want to know... but he's now a proud father, and talks about babies instead of football for a change!
Ry now has his Level 3 Construction Site Management qualifications, of which he is justifiably proud.
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.... Not forgetting steve of course.. he's the fit one, plays rugger, numerous girlfriends, good looking (apparently) always in the pub, but somehow ... how does he always manage to get the easy jobs like sweeping the pavement and stacking the bricks.... maybe that means he's management material.. :-)
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Nick, Adam, Dale, Greig...
Part of the support team - carpenters, plasterers and timber framers - all talented and very definitely individuals to a man..! We'll write more on these guys as time allows..
