Cliveden is an historic hotel in the vicinity of Taplow. It is owned by the National Trust and has an interesting background. It was built originally for the Duke of Buckingham in 1670 but the original building has almost entirely been rebuilt. In 1893 the building came under the ownership of the Astor family until 1942 when Viscount Astor gave the house to The National Trust. The house and gardens are situated on high ground adjacent to The River Thames in Buckinghamshire. The hotel reached notoriety when the Profumo Affair made the headlines as many of the liaisons occurred at Cliveden.
This was a very active bustling kitchen which served the Hotel restaurants. The chef, John Wood, was a chef of renown having featured as a celebrity chef on Channel 4. The kitchen served high quality food to military precision so the last thing needed were surveyors working around when the kitchen was on service. So the work, which also involved measuring above false ceilings, had to be carried out at night.
The kitchens were looking a little tired and were requiring refurbishment and the ventilation ducting was requiring replacement. Under the veneer of the kitchen this was an historic area of the building and consequently greater care had to be taken with the measuring. The ceilings were found to be vaulted so this increased the amount of detail above the ceiling.
The area of interest was located in the basement, it was traversed as a closed loop and the shape defined by radial observations. Using traditional sketching and measuring techniques the detail was infilled, this included the ducting above the false ceilings. Some of the detail had to be fixed by suspending a plumb-bob and measuring fixes from radial positions.
The realisation of this project was a refurbished, state of the art kitchen fitted into a highly constrained area of the basement. The detailed floor plan, section and elevation allowed the kitchen designers to work with confidence on their finished designs.
