CLIENT: Wallis Construction Ltd
Old Spitalfields was a wholesale fruit and vegetable market in its past and is now a world-famous London tourist destination in its new guise as a popular food and general market place, attracting some 25,000 visitors each week.
However, time has taken its toll, and this beautiful Victorian building in which the market is situated requires general internal refurbishment, glazing and re-roofing works.
Our role in providing the scaffolding for this was technically challenging. However, time has taken its toll, and this beautiful Victorian building in which the market is situated requires general internal refurbishment, glazing and re-roofing works. Our role in providing the scaffolding for this was technically challenging. The brief was to build an internal bridged access birdcage to enable these works to be carried out, but with a minimum disruption to the market traders and the general public.
Now completed, the scaffolding incorporates a double-decked loading gantry to the Brushfield Street and Lamb Street entrances joined either side by an umbilical link gantry which runs the full width of the building.
The umbilical link, in turn, feeds the outer phases of the birdcage that is laid out in narrow tower formations in line with the existing Victorian cast-iron column roof supports. The advantage of this is that it keeps scaffolding to a minimum at ground level, ensuring the market can continue operating as normal with little disruption.
The boarded platform was erected 4 metres up with the areas underneath protected by a heavy-duty polythene membrane inlay. This enabled a secondary birdcage platform to be built above it, following the profile of the glazed lantern roof light.
This has been a significant project with a combined area of 4,500m2 being completed incident free.
- combined area of