The Cundy House

The Cundy House is a small conduit house built in the seventeenth century to provide a water supply to Bolsover Castle.

Consolidated as a roofless ruin in the 1970’s, it became a target for vandalism and misuse. Detailed investigation revealed that the building originally had a solid stone-vaulted roof. This unusual roof form was restored in 2002-2003 by English Heritage as client and ourselves as contractors for the work.

The vaulted roof was rebuilt on the formers and then the ashlar stone roof slabs laid on to the core work to fill in the levels. The gable stone work had to be rebuilt to the correct pitch and the stone slabs fixed at the correct rake. This detail was all taken off the existing copings.

One of the major problems to overcome was that the stone to be used was from a local quarry three miles away but this quarry has only produced crushed base materials since the 1920's and block stone was needed. With the help of the quarry, they brought some blocks down to the quarry entrance for us to take to our yard and saw up into the ashlar blocks you see. Over 50 tons of masonry was re-fixed and used to give this building its much needed restoration. We have also carried out some minor consolidation works on the conduit houses. These smaller monuments were also a means of providing water to Bolsover Castle.