former student blog

Former Chippendale School student’s experience of making a pitch pine balustrade for an Adam church

This is a blog by Stuart Clachan of Clachan Wood in Ayrshire who designs and makes bespoke handmade furniture as well as doing furniture restorations.

Stuart was a Chippendale School student in 2009 and came 2nd in the ‘Triton Woodworker of the year 2011’ competition (sponsored by GMC Publication’s Furniture and Cabinetmaking magazine).

It’s not every day you are asked to submit a design proposal for an ‘A’ listed building, Kirkoswald Church, that is the only Church in Scotland Robert Adam worked on. The brief was to design, make and fit a balustrade for the steps leading up to the pulpit and round a wee landing. As soon as I saw the pulpit I realised that a simple hand rail would not do the pulpit or the church any justice at all.

So, I proposed what I thought was a good solution picking up on the existing moulding and turning details without thinking too much about how it would be made. It was a strange situation as the steps leading to the pulpit had never had a hand rail – much to the surprise of building control.

The decision to add it meant a lot of details would have to be considered in order to get the hand rail height and newel post design to look correct with regard to the existing work; as I would find out later.