Stone Edge of Nelson, Lancashire, have secured an order worth more than £1.2million to construct load bearing masonry façades to reproduce the Classical Sandown Hall, which once stood in Wavertree, Liverpool, for a private client.

The red sandstone Hall was dismantled stone by stone in the 1990s after architects had made detailed drawings of it so that it could be rebuilt.

It was moved on pallets for storage in a field in Warrington, but the pallets have rotted and the stone is gradually sinking into the ground. Some of it seems to have been stolen and graffiti has been daubed over much of the rest of it.

The idea had been to use the original stone for the recreation of the hall in Clitheroe, Lancashire, but it was decided red sandstone would look out of place there. So a completely new replica Hall is being built in Johnsons Wellfield Crosland Hill sandstone that is more in keeping with the area. Johnsons are supplying finished stone, worked on their three robots and finished by hand.

Stone Edge have consulted the original stonework, as well as the architects’ drawings, in order to produce a precise copy of the Hall’s stonework with its pediment, cornices and four columns with ionic capitals that support the main tablature.

The construction is the same as the orignal hall, using loadbearing stone, 300mm at the plinth, 100mm for the ashlar, and 150mm window reveals, all on bed. The pediment and cornice use 800mm stones on bed. “People don’t build like this any more,” says Richard Denneny from Stone Edge.