Ghillie Dhu Edinburgh
Carry out extensive ornamental plaster restoration, cornice repairs and cornice design work.
Client: Ghillie Dhu restaurant
Category: Projects
Location: Edinburgh
We were appointed by the prestigious G1 Group in conjunction with Graven Images to carry out extensive ornamental plaster restoration, cornice repairs and cornice design work during the transformation of this beautiful old church into the Ghillie Dhu restaurant, bar and music venue in Edinburgh which is now one of the City’s must-see interiors.
A more detailed description can be found in the gallery below. read more
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The Ghillie Dhu was originally St Thomas’ Church built-in 1843 in a Neo-Norman style; it was the work of the architect David Cousin and is situated between Rutland St and Shandwick Place.
During the renovation, a complete wall separating the property from the hotel next door had to be recreated 1.5m into the building to allow for soundproofing, this wall and all the Gothic arches, cornicing and plaster detailing had to be recreated exactly like the original wall, this along with extensive damage to other areas of the plaster ornamentation, cornices etc. was our remit.
The Gothic arches in the main hall feature gargoyle plaster reliefs, normally we would find that the features on these individual plaster details would repeat every 3 or 4 casts but in this case there were 17 individual distorted gargoyle faces each similar but different, before they repeated.
We carried out our restoration to the same detail.
As well as the cornice restoration and cornice repairs we were asked to replicate the oak floral panels which housed the church organ, we replicated these using traditional plastering methods, these were then fitted and stained down to look like the original oak panels.
On the ground floor more of the floral plaster panels were fitted to either end of the long bar then painted white to great effect.
On the main bar itself we used 3 different stock cornices from our range to create a very large cornice; mood lighting was then added between the different plaster mouldings creating a unique and beautiful effect.
