The never ending story of the upkeep of Risca Male Choir headquarters PART 1
Risca Male Choir signed its first lease of the old Risca Urban District Council Offices thirty two years ago on the 1st March 1988. Over the intervening years, members of the choir have carried out an enormous amount of work in maintaining the building to the required standard. The majority of this work was coordinated by the late Gordon Holly who was awarded life membership for his work. This is the story of the latest phase that has been carried out in the summer of 2020.
During the last few years we have had an ongoing problem with a leaking roof. Unfortunately, despite having it repaired, another leak appeared causing a lot of damage to the walls and ceilings in three of the first floor rooms. This project was far too big for choir members alone to deal with, so we employed the services of a builder, George Wilson. Scaffolding was required to comply with Health and Safety regulations and in order to maximize this large outlay of funds, we decided to overhaul the exterior of the building at the same time. We would repair and paint all the windows, cap the soffits and fascias and replace all the guttering and downpipes while the scaffolding was available. All this work would not have been possible without our local councillor Robert Owen who helped the choir secure a grant from the Welsh Assembly Government.
The outbuildings were first to be tackled with a lot of work put into repairing or replacing the doors, windows and fascias before painting them all.
As we all know, when you carry out work on the exterior of a building you start from the top and work down. However, due to a delay with the scaffolding company, we did this work the hard way, from the ground up. All the ground floor windows and doors of the main building were sanded back, repaired and painted along with the decorative sandstone surrounds.
Eventually the scaffolding arrived and was erected along the right hand side and rear of the building. We now had access to the roof and that pesky leak! The builder, George, and two choristers, Mike and Kevin found how the rain was getting in and this priority repair took two days to complete. George was then able to turn his attention to the rest of the roof: missing or broken slates were replaced along with the gutters and downpipes, while the fascias and soffits were capped.
During the time that the roof was under repair the work on the first floor windows could not begin. As soon as it was safe to do so the volunteers sanded, repaired, replaced then painted all the windows on the right and rear of the building.
Many thanks to the following members for all their hard work on this mammoth job during the last few months:
Mike Sullivan who organized the builder and scaffolders (an amazing feat of perseverance and endurance!), Alan Davis, Kevin Lovett, Chris Davies, Wyn Cable, Trevor Baker, Keith Jefferson, Lyndon Price, Phil Black, Paul Phillips, Ian Meredith, Cliff James, Howard Morgan and (our very own Master Baker) John Watkins.
Written by:
Alan Davis, Kevin Lovett & Mike Sullivan
