Devonshire House
Styles Façade Solutions® (formerly Thomann-Hanry®) was tasked with a heritage building facade cleaning and restoration at the Grade II listed Devonshire House, where scaffolding across three busy elevations would have been costly, slow, and a security risk to office staff, retailers, and thousands of daily Tube passengers.
Using the scaffold-free Façade Gommage cleaning process, operated from a self-contained cabin on a lorry-mounted boom, the team delivered a fast, secure clean without permanent scaffolding, revealing the Portland stone’s original warm tones.
Mobile elevating work platforms then allowed stonemasons to repair and restore each elevation independently and efficiently, returning the island site to its original, impressive appearance without the disruption unsightly scaffolding would have caused.
Solutions provided
Devonshire House
The original, 18th century Palladian-style Devonshire House, was the London home of the Dukes of Devonshire. It stood empty after the First World War until it was purchased by wealthy industrialists Shurmer Sibthorpe and Lawrence Harrison for £750,000 (just over £43,500,000 in 2026 prices). They demolished the building in 1924 with plans to build a hotel (on the extensive rear garden area), flats, and the massive commercial and office block which was to retain the Devonshire House name.
The site was designed in the Glasgow/American classicism style with Graeco-Roman styling by the American architectural practice Carrère and Hastings with the assistance of Sir Charles Herbert Reilly. Constructed (1924–1926) from a Portland stone-clad steel frame, the massive island office block became the UK headquarters of Citroën until 1936 and later served as the War Damage Commission’s headquarters during the Second World War.
The wine cellar of the original Devonshire House is now the site of the ticket office at Green Park Underground station. What remains of the original Devonshire House can be seen when you walk 180 metres from the station to Green Park, where the original gates to Devonshire House are now located. Devonshire House gained Grade II listed building status in May 1972.
Styles Façade Solutions® delivers heritage façade cleaning even in London's busiest locations, using scaffold-free Façade Gommage access platforms that work safely above transport hubs like Green Park station. Protecting historic stonework while keeping the streets, station entrances and pedestrians below completely unaffected.
What Is Heritage Building Façade Cleaning?
With the need to undertake significant heritage building facade cleaning and repair work across three elevations of the building, this posed a number of problems for the building's owner. With office staff, retail shops and over 68,000 people using Green Park Tube Station each day, scaffolding the building would have been prohibitively expensive and time-consuming, and could have caused building-wide security issues.
Through the use of the scaffold-free, heritage-grade, Façade Gommage cleaning process, Styles Façade Solutions® was able to ensure a fast and efficient turnaround for the project. The system is conducted from a self-contained cleaning cabin, which is attached to a lorry-mounted boom. This means that the whole system can be moved away from the site at the end of every day to help reduce any safety and security risks.
With the accumulated dirt and grime sensitively removed from the listed Portland stone façade, the natural warm tones of the stone were revealed for the first time in years. This then allowed our stonemason team to start work on repairing and restoring key areas of concern which had been highlighted during the cleaning process.
The Benefits of Professional Heritage Building Façade Cleaning
Through the use of mobile elevating work platforms (MEWPs), the heritage stonemason team from Styles Façade Solutions® could fix and restore the façade without the need for expensive, time-consuming, and obtrusive scaffolding.
This also allowed work on all three elevations to be conducted independently which would not have been possible if the whole building had been enveloped in unsightly scaffolding. With all areas of the façade now cleaned and restored, the island site now looks just as impressive as it did when first constructed.
“It has been a delight to demonstrate the effective nature of the Façade Gommage cleaning process and how we are able to deliver a heritage-grade clean without the need for cocooning a building in unsightly, expensive, and time-consuming scaffolding for months on end. The results speak for themselves and show why more and more property managers are contacting Styles Façade Solutions®.”
Mark Styles, Managing Director, Styles Façade Solutions
See the links below for more examples of the results Styles Façade Solutions® (formerly Thomann-Hanry®) can deliver for your business.
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