Destroying things is often an excellent way of seeing how things are made.  Historic Environment Scotland helped to fund an experiment carried out with ourselves, David Narro Associates and Masons Mortar to perfect a specification for the simple, effective and economical repair of historic structures in the sea or underwater.

The off-site trial consists of three different kinds of typical core masonry placed in a temporary sandbag enclosure built in Masons Mortar’s yard at their superb facility at Cowdenbeath, Fife.  This was then gravity filled with coloured lime based grout.  The photo on the right shows Douglas Johnston of Masons Mortar breaking open grouting 24 hours after pouring to check it is perfectly distributed, with the the different colours showing the effective flow of the different pours.

As grouting is irreversible, it is essential to know that it works!