A R Manley Limited - Specialised Joinery Manufacture

A R Manley

Case Studies

A R Manley Church of St Sannan at Bedwelty, Caerphilly

Despite suffering serious structural problems which had led to the cracking of its rafters and the failure of previous repairs, the roof of a Grade II listed church in South Wales has been successfully replaced in a contract involving A R Manley & Sons Ltd (a Member of the British Woodworking Federation).

The Church of St Sannan at Bedwelty, Caerphilly, features an unusual layout with two 13th Century naves seperated by a stone archade. While the north aisle still retains a historic Medieval oak 'wagon' roof, the weight of the high collard roofs over the south nave had caused the walls to spread by almost a metre. Work on the naive in the mid 20th Century saw the origional roof replaced with an A-frame structure, but by the late 1990s, had failed extensively, and more radical intervention was needed.

Specialist joinery manufacturer A R Manley was called upon by main contractor IJ Preece to prduce and install a series of primarily decorative elliptical arches in English Oak. Furthermore, due to programme restraints, these had to be installed beneath the new loadbearing roof with its covering of slates as the project progressed during 2002 anf early 2003.

Such was the complexity of the task it took A R Manley's team more than four months to source suffiicient green oak on the correct curvature to fashion t he elliptical sections. Each one was made up in four sections and lifted into place by hand.

The geometry was further complicated by the increasing divergence of the walls, causing the chord length, (or diameter of the timber arches) to increase. With the overall length remaining conctant, the height therefore gradually reduces, offering the illusion that the roof has slowly settled over the centuries.

A R Manley