King's School Shop

This interesting building is sited at the westerly end of Palace Street and is commonly referred to as 'the crooked door shop'. This site is well known throughout the world in Heritage centres.

The King's School sold the property to a private organisation. The new owner unfortunately decided to cut a walk way door through the main chimney which provided stability to the building along with the main oak structures at the front. As a result of this alteration, the building moved to the extent that it became a dangerous structure. The building required structural shoring from the road serving King Street.

S.T. Abbott was awarded the contract to stabilize the building in accordance with specialist heritage design engineering. This involved complete rebuilding of the chimney from the basement and entailed the manufacture of 50mm bricks from a local brickfield carefully laid to exacting mortar to comply with conversation requirements. Large concrete bases were installed in the basement to support a new steel frame at ground floor level.

The roof front gable on Palace Street elevation is approximately 600mm out of vertical alignment. An engineering design was introduced here to stabilize the roof and hold it in its present position to maintain the heritage features. These metal straps and ties were carefully installed by our own directly employed tradesmen.

The support shoring was carefully removed and the building retained its new bolted position that can be seen today.