Windsor Castle Royal Mews Gate Restoration

During my time as a journeyman blacksmith I was fortunate enough to work on some very prestigious jobs, one of which was the restoration of the Royal mews gates in Windsor castle. They came to us in a very sorry state as they hadn’t been taken out of the castle for any repair work since they were first installed so had been held together with running repairs that were now failing.

The gates were removed and shipped back to the workshop however unfortunately in transit they were damaged further (better to happen before the restoration process than afterwards I guess). The extent of the restoration became apparent once the gates had been shot blasted.  The large cast iron fleur-de-lises had been damaged, the top rails were badly cracked and held together with fish plates and there was lots of corrosion and work to be done. once a damage and proposed restoration report had been written and the scale of works agreed with the palace I got to work repairing the fleur-de-lises.

Before and after repairs shown below

  

This was achieved using specialist cast iron welding rods and heat cycling in the forge with long natural cool down periods and lots of patience but was worth it in the end. Whilst repairing the fleurs it became apparent how ingeniously these gates were designed and assembled using a mixture of a wrought iron structure with cast iron embellishments all held together in sockets with lead so if anything was damaged they could be replaced relatively easily. For example the fleur-de-lises had a square socket in there base which sat on top of a cast iron square pin. These would then have hot leaded poured around them to hold the two pieces firmly in place for many many years.

see images below

 

 

 

 

The next job was to repair the top large cast iron bar which had been broken into three pieces and held together with fish plates which were unsightly and not in keeping with the original gate design. Firstly I had to repair the damage done to the piece by past repairs this involved riveting up large holes that had been drilled to connect the fish plates and a few cosmetic repairs before the major task of reconnecting all three broken pieces back together so they not only would be one piece but also strong enough to hold the whole gate together as it was designed to do.

The next challenge was to make a connector plate that would allow the diamond hole to be free of obstruction and to be invisible and strong enough to hold the heavy cast iron sections together. I forged some diamond holed fixing plates and ground out the bottom of the cast iron pieces so they inset into the cast iron and sat flush. I then drilled and tapped the pieces so they could be screwed together as one whole piece. To ensure absolute strength within the top rails I also drilled and tapped studding through them and welded up the joints with cast iron rods making them hopefully bombproof.

see below for images of the top bar repair process

 

Once all the top bars had been repaired in the same way as shown above I had to rivet it back onto the gate because the old rivets had to be drilled out to get them off in the first place I drilled and tapped new rivet blanks into the existing holes and it worked a charm finally the gates were structurally sound again.

Once the top bars had been riveted onto the gates and all other minor repair work had been completed the gates could be stood up and the Fleur-di-Lises could be leaded back into place.

once this was done the gates were ready for the paint shop and to be fitted back into there royal home. They were fitted and leaded back into where they came from over a period of 4 long days and had automation attached them. the fleur-de-lises were gold leafed at a later date. I was very proud to be apart of the restoration process for such an important pair of gates and learnt a great deal about both myself and the blacksmithing craft.