Fairhurst

Aberconway House

LOCATION: Mayfair, London
CLIENT: Private Client
STATUS: Current
COST: £10m

Aberconway House was the last great Mansion to be built in Mayfair in the early 1920's. The building designed by Wimperis and Simpson as the London residence of Henry McLaren (later Lord Aberconway). The building design reflects the status and social life with the two lower floors each only comprising three huge rooms for entertaining, including a ballroom, banquet dining room and cantilever black marble debonair staircase. The building is now Grade II listed.

The current refurbishment will add a new basement swimming pool and spa. The difficult geology, and high ground water, have presented design and construction problems. Fairhurst have carried out a finite element analysis of the new pool construction adjacent to the party wall to limit both settlement and horizontal movements during construction.

The removal of several load bearing walls has required a careful sequence of works to be formulated. Fairhurst have provided a sequence of 'cartoon' drawings to explain the sequence, together with detailed temporary work designs. A number of areas require controlled hydraulic jacking of the structure to transfer loads from temporary works onto permanent supports.

The external handmade bricks will be cleaned and repaired in accordance with good conservation practice. Internally the building will be sophistically serviced, with air conditioning and centralised audio and video entertainment systems.

For more information on Fairhurst's involvement with Refurbishment projects please view our Refurbishement & Conservation page.