Projects

Project Profiles

The three divisions of Inscapes have worked on many prestigious projects at many well known venues - some of which are desinscapes-project-profile-hampton-court-palace.pdfcribed in the case studies which can be viewed using the navigation panel on the left of the screen. 

A recent project with which we were pleased to be associated took place at Hampton Court Palace - one of the jewels in the crown of British history. It was originally built for Cardinal Wolsey, a favourite of King Henry VIII, but as he fell from favour the palace was passed to the King, who enlarged and embellished it – a process carried on by his many successors down through the years. Today, the palace is open to the public, and is a major tourist attraction drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. It is cared for by an independent charity, Historic Royal Palaces, which receives no funding from the Government or the Crown.

As part of a continuous process of conservation and improvement to the palace grounds and buildings, the authorities decided to restore one of the busiest main access approaches to the palace back to the 17th century layout and also to undertake repairs to the adjoining lawns.
Our task was two-fold. First, to remove tarmac on the road edges to a width of 3m, working tight in against historical bollards, then to bring in topsoil and re-turf the whole area, tying in the new turf with existing banks of turf. Second, to excavate and prepare the base for the new walkways between the long Barrack Block building and the main palace building and then to lay tarmac with a resin-bonded surface along these pedestrian routes.  This operation was completed in two phases, one either side of the road, sectioning off each area so that pedestrian access was not completely disrupted. Since there were so many visitors passing close to the works there was an especially rigorous Health and Safety policy on site, with our site manager Gareth Davies running the project and a full traffic management plan with banksmen to receive deliveries of material.
William Page, Conservation Building Surveyor at Historic Royal palaces, recalls that the project was not all plain sailing. “There was a late start due to unforeseen circumstances caused by a number of unmarked services running across parts of the site and also much unscheduled work to the turf irrigation system being installed by the Palace Estates Department,“ he says. “The Inscapes team adopted a diligent and professional approach to the project across the board but with special regard to Health & Safety. Their Site Manager ensured efficient liaison with our staff and kept a keen eye on supervision of the site. This was especially important considering that the work was being undertaken in the middle of the busy, primary visitor entrance area of the main building.” 

The end result is a landscape that all can be proud of and which dramatically improves the overall visitor experience. We might even say that the approaches to the palace are once again fit for a king!

Have a look at this project in more detail by downloading this pdf file: inscapes-hampton-court-palace-project-profile.pdf