The owners of a 16-bedroom Victorian hotel on Bowness-on-Windermere’s lakefront needed a complete re-roof during their quietest trading period. The property — a substantial three-storey building dating from 1875, with a complex slate roof featuring dormers, valley gutters, decorative ridge tiles and four chimney stacks — had been losing slates in every winter storm for several years, and a full strip-and-re-slate was the only lasting solution.
The challenge was speed. The hotel had a six-week window between late October and mid-December when occupancy was low enough to justify closing the top floor. Every day of scaffold hire beyond that window would cost the business revenue during the Christmas booking season. We needed to erect a full working scaffold quickly, give the roofing contractor unrestricted access to every part of the roof, and strip down the moment the last slate was fixed. The hotel also needed to remain open to guests on the lower two floors throughout the entire works, which added commercial scaffolding logistics to the programme.
We erected a full four-elevation independent scaffold wrapping the entire building to above ridge height. The scaffold included working platforms at eaves level and ridge level on all four sides, with loading bays on both gable ends positioned for the roofing contractor’s material flow — old slates down one side, new slates and battens up the other.
The lakefront elevation required a pedestrian canopy along the full width of the building to protect guests arriving and departing through the main entrance below. All four chimney stacks were integrated into the scaffold design with dedicated platforms at each stack head, allowing the roofer to carry out flaunching and lead flashing work without needing a separate chimney scaffold. The scaffold was designed to comply with hotel fire escape requirements, maintaining clear access to two emergency exit routes at all times throughout the hire period.
The hotel’s position on the main Bowness lakefront road meant scaffold erection had to happen without blocking the public pavement or the adjacent car park entrance. We phased the erection to build the lakefront elevation first — overnight and early morning before guest check-out — then worked around the building over the following day and a half. The Windermere and Bowness area is one of the busiest parts of the Lake District even in autumn, so pedestrian management was a constant consideration.
The hotel’s complex roofline — with six dormers, three valley gutters and an ornamental slate turret at one corner — demanded a scaffold configuration with multiple platform levels and access points that went well beyond a simple eaves-height wrap. We used bridging scaffolding to span over a ground-floor conservatory on the south elevation without loading the glass roof below, and staircase access on the steep rear garden where the ground dropped three metres from the car park level to the basement service entrance. Maintaining fire escape routes while the scaffold was in place required close coordination with the hotel’s fire safety officer and the installation of illuminated scaffold-mounted exit signs at both designated escape points.
The scaffold was erected in two days and the roofing contractor started immediately. The full re-slate — including all valleys, dormers, ridge tiles, chimney flashings and the ornamental turret — was completed in five weeks. We dismantled the scaffold over two days in the first week of December, three days ahead of the agreed deadline. The hotel reopened the top floor for Christmas bookings on schedule, with a watertight roof for the first time in years. Zero guest complaints were received about noise or disruption during the works — a result of careful phasing and constant communication between our team and the hotel management.
Call 07415331135 to discuss scaffolding for your commercial or hospitality project. We work around your business schedule. Or contact us through our contact page. Find out more about us.
