Specialist repair of Mosaic St Giles Cathedral

We were commissioned to undertake the specialist repair and conservation of a historic mosaic floor at St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh. Working within the St Eloi’s Aisle, the project required careful planning and close liaison with the Cathedral team to ensure the repairs respected the significance of this important historic building.

Years of heavy foot traffic had caused sections of grout to fail, allowing individual marble and ceramic tesserae to become loose. Following detailed site meetings and condition assessments with the Cathedral Architect, a conservation repair strategy was developed to stabilise the floor whilst retaining as much original historic fabric as possible.

Replacement tesserae were carefully matched using Italian Nero marble and ceramic pieces selected from our studio stock. Each tessera was hand-cut using a hammer and hardie before being fixed with a lime-based adhesive and finished with a natural cement grout matched to the original historic floor.

This project demonstrates our specialist experience in the conservation, repair and restoration of historic mosaics, churches and listed buildings throughout Scotland.