Tynemouth Priory.
History
This an English Heritage property set between the river and the North Sea. A 7th-century Anglian monastery, burial place of Oswin, sainted King of Northumbria. After its destruction by Danish raiders, the present Benedictine priory was re-founded on its site in c. 1090.
The east end of the priory church, built in c. 1200 still survives almost to its full height, dominating the headland. Beyond it stands a small and exceptionally well-preserved chapel with a rose window and an ornately sculpted roof vault. This was built in the mid-15th century as a chantry for the souls of the powerful Percy 
family, Earls of Northumberland.
Enclosing both headland and monastery and still surviving in part, were the strong walls which once made Tynemouth among the largest fortified areas in England, and an important bastion against the Scots.
Probably begun by Edward I in 1296 they were strengthened and updated in the 15th century. Thus when the priory's 19 monks surrendered Tynemouth to Henry VIII in 1539, it was immediately adopted as a royal castle. Thereafter the fortress headland continued to play its centuries-old part in coastal defence, both against Napoleon and during the two World Wars.
Project
Team Force was commissioned to conserve the Rood Screen wall at the priory due to very hard over pointing of the mortar joints.
Scotch pointing as it is called is a cement and sand mix with large aggregate or neat cement pointing; this has been used on many of our heritage buildings in the past and has caused the stone units to deteriorate quite quickly.
Cement was introduced to the building industry in the 1920’s, this new and wonderful material that would consolidate all old buildings and preserve them for the future. Cement has its place of course but not on historic buildings of 
this type.
Unfortunately this was found not to be the case as the cement is far stronger than the stone host material and locks in harmful moisture and salts, the salts crystallize and expand and blow the front of the stone off, moisture can also affect this. Stone is very absorbent and lime mortar should be weaker than the stone so allowing the moisture and salts to travel and drain from the stone and evaporate from the mortar joints. The lime mortar around a stone is sacrificial and can be repointed when needed.
To remove this hard cement material our operatives drilled a series of holes in the cement pointing and very carefully removed the 
cement mortar. Some of the cement mortar went a considerable way back to the core of the wall, however all had to be removed. The idea is to remove this without any damage to the arises of the stone.
Some of the voids left after the removal of Scotch pointing were so large that we needed to insert pinning stones to fill the voids, this ensured that the stones and mortar were stabilized and the lime mortar could carbonate quicker.
Some new stones were cut and dressed on site and inserted into the castle wall above the kitchen area in the stair well, the stones follow the original line of the building and are tooled accordingly.
Team Force were commended for their work on the priory and are very satisfied with their efforts. Adding the scotch pointing on this property was the hardest cement pointing they have ever had to deal with, but full credit to the operatives, they kept their discipline and managed to remove all of the pointing without any damage to the surrounding masonry.
Created: 18/05/2010 - [Team Force Restoration Ltd © 2010]