Nigel Gervis presented with a prestigious Marsh Award for Traditional Building Skills

On the 14th March 2012, we were delighted to be invited to attend an award ceremony at Kenwood House, London where Nigel Gervis, founder and technical director of Ty-Mawr Lime Ltd, was presented with the prestigious Marsh Award for Traditional Building Skills by Mr Brian Marsh OBE.

This annual award is given to an individual trainer who has demonstrated outstanding work within the built heritage sector.

The Awards, generously sponsored by the Marsh Trust, are run in partnership with English Heritage and CITB Construction Skills. The Traditional Building Skills award is designed to recognise the contribution of an individual to the conservation of historic buildings specifically for ensuring that the necessary skills and knowledge are kept alive through their training and teaching.

Nigel, who has been delivering traditional building skills courses since 1996, has now shared his endless enthusiasm with over 10,000 delegates from all over the world who have attended Ty-Mawr’s core courses from contractors and apprentices to homeowners, architects and conservation officers and 1,000s more who have attended his 
talks and CPD seminars.

He works tirelessly to promote the principles of historic building conservation but also the use of lime and ‘modern’ ecological and sustainable building materials. His philosophy is pragmatic, his approach is always to understand the nature of the material and the building’s structure to ensure that the materials selected and used are ‘appropriate’.

Feedback, collected from all courses going back over a decade, demonstrates time and again, his ability to communicate his skills and knowledge clearly and with a huge passion.

When presenting the awards, Seamus Hanna of Construction Skills read out several comments from a wide range of people and organisations that had put ‘pen to paper’ over the years to thank Nigel, including the Landmark Trust, THIs, Local Authority Building Control, Churches Conservation Trust, as well as schools and individuals