A former brewery building in South London underwent refurbishment work for which a leading member of the Steel Window Association has manufactured and installed bespoke double glazed W20 frames. West Leigh Ltd carried out the £130K contract on the Plough Brewery, Wandsworth Road, for Marston Properties working closely with specialist restoration architect, McDaniel Woolf in order to satisfy the concerns of local conservation officers.

The new windows were customised to respect the property’s heritage, as well as to offer much more improved thermal and acoustic performance. In addition, West Leigh’s fitting of the windows had to be completed without disruption to the work of the Plough Brewery’s tenants, who are mainly involved in the fashion and creative industries.

“We worked with conservation and with West Leigh, to create a suite of windows for this renovation which would be harmonious – and being in steel would work with the authentic cast windows. West Leigh is a wonderful company to work with – they did a terrific job, including the installation which had to be carried out with the building fully occupied; requiring coordination and the erection of temporary screens within the rooms,” commented Richard Woolf, the architect for Marston Properties.

The 88 made to measure windows produced by West Leigh are believed to mimic the appearance of the original ones that were installed back in 1868. “It is always difficult with a property of this age to be absolutely certain, but from some of the 19th century photographs available, and a couple of frames we found on the lower parts of stairways, they were probably a hybrid of sand-cast iron and timber,” explained Richard.

West Leigh is well known in London for its involvement in detailed refurbishment work, including historic listen building projects, and it is now increasingly branching put into new built work. Its ability to produce windows matching the performance of many PVC-U systems by employing the recently developed W50 section frames has seen the company working on schools, colleges and other public buildings, as well as high end residential apartments and other domestic properties.