Major refurbishment work at the Spalding Gentlemen’s Society museum on Broad Street has uncovered parts of earlier buildings beneath the floor, two Victorian-era water cisterns and features that had been hidden for decades.
The project began in January 2026, when Messenger Construction of Collyweston started remedial work inside the museum after months of planning. The work is being overseen by Greenwood Projects’ project managers and quantity surveyors, with Purcell Architecture handling construction drawings and planning compliance, Illuminous Consulting responsible for mechanical and electrical design, and York Sills acting as structural engineers.
The Spalding Gentlemen’s Society Buildings & Infrastructure Committee is coordinating the project. It is also working within the budget and timetable attached to an Arts Council Museum Estate and Development Fund grant, which requires the Society to be back in the building by the end of March 2027.
Cracks, floors and hidden features
One of the first jobs was repairing cracks in the Lecture Room walls. Builders removed short sections of horizontal mortar and inserted stainless-steel helical wall ties, known as Helifix bars, using lime mortar and new bricks to stitch the walls back together.
Further cracking was investigated in the Librarian’s Office and Johnson Room, where additional Helifix bars were installed. Floorboards were then removed from the ground floor. In the Johnson Room, workers found that the ends of the floor joists did not appear to be keyed into the walls. Beneath them was material believed to be demolition rubble from cottages that had previously stood on the site.
The roof of the Norman Leveritt library, also known as the Stacks, was removed by Humphrey Contracting. A new opening was made between the Maples Room and the adjoining Business Centre, where the building contractor had established offices, welfare facilities and storage.
The museum’s front door and ground-floor internal doors were carefully taken out and placed in storage before further floor removal and piling. During March, workers rediscovered the old back door of the caretaker’s cottage and a toilet window, both of which had been covered since at least alterations carried out in 1960. The back door had been bricked up externally and was hidden beneath the fire escape.
Access and heritage discoveries
The Johnson Room fireplace was carefully removed, as was a 15th-century fireplace rescued from Orme Hall near Kirton and given to the Society in 1927. That fireplace had stood in the glazed annexe, built in 1925 to house larger stone and iron artefacts presented to the Society while the strong room was being constructed.
The main staircase and quarter-landing were also removed to prepare for piling along the exterior wall. Elsewhere, the doorway between the Foyer and Maples Gallery was widened. The previous doorway was too low and narrow to allow wheelchair access to that part of the museum; the replacement double doors will match those leading into the Johnson Room.
Steel goalposts were installed through the Maples Gallery to stabilise the space. The new steelwork will provide a more permanent connection between the gallery and the rest of the building after earlier alterations removed internal walls and a staircase when the caretaker’s quarters were converted into gallery space.
Archaeologists monitored excavation of the foyer floor, which was taken down by about 60 centimetres to remove brick demolition infill and reach the soil. They found remains of brick walls from the former cottages, along with original brick flooring similar to a floor discovered in a Business Centre test pit excavated in March 2025.
Piling work and the next stage
An old bottle-shaped freshwater cistern was also found below the Johnson Room floor. It matched one previously discovered in the Maples Gallery. Both cisterns had narrow openings covered by flagstones and were about six feet in diameter. The Society says such features were common in the Victorian era and were used to collect water from roof gutters for washhouses and similar uses.
During April and May, contractors began installing about 60 piles around the internal perimeter of the museum. Each pile was being driven to a depth of about 11 metres, after being pre-bored to approximately two metres to reduce noise and vibration. Contractors were monitoring those effects, with piling expected to be finished by the end of May.
Gas and electrical services were removed during the same period. A new three-phase electrical supply is due to be installed later in the year, ready to serve the Business Centre when the future museum extension is built.
Once piling is complete, a concrete raft will be cantilevered beneath the walls to help prevent further movement. Demolition of the rear of the building was scheduled for June.
The Society said a further update covering summer 2026 would follow.