Grade1 listed Henry Lucas Hospital

5 February 2009

Today is a very wet and snowy start on phase 2 of the Grade 1 listed building Henry Lucas Hospital. This is the only Grade 1 listed building in Wokingham and is a bit of a secret, even to the locals. These alms houses were started in1663 and completed 3 years later after Henry Lucas left money to build them. They were built to provide shelter for the poor in the Wokingham area. Being Grade 1 listed it sometimes seems you need permission even to sneeze, but all our upgrading works have been successfully passed by the relevant departments and today is phase 2 (see a number of pictures of phase 1 on the home page).

The building went into private ownership in the year 2000 and Graduate Landscapes has been given the job of restoring the gardens and orchards to their former glory. We completely replaced the box hedging and yew topiary in the formal garden, while renovating the 350 year old well was a challenging project for our hard landscaping manager Tony Burns.

This month we are laying a large volume of natural paving to the rear of the site, together with a planting of shade loving ground cover for a north facing walkway. We expect to be on site for a number of weeks, and our foreman Neil Prince will be in charge of the project.