Sadly Coleshill House burnt down in the 1950's and the site and
grounds are now managed by the National Trust. Very little remains on the estate connected with
WW2.
CART is running a project to re-create Coleshill House virtually.
Start
In November (2010) CART researcher, Bill Ashby, a retired Halcrow Engineer, posted a message on the
Halcrow internal message board requesting some CAD assistance with his Coleshill research. This
ticked all the boxes for one such viewer, Ian Edwards. Bill and Ian were soon formulating a plan to
digitise the little information that was then available. A number of Halcrow employees responded to the request,
but unfortunately other commitments had to take priority, although Bill and Ian would like to thank Peter
Kleberc for his valuable contribution.
Under Bills guidance Ian decided that he would draw the stable
yard and clock tower in 2D CAD format, after several site
visits by Bill with his camera and tape measure, this was ready in draft form by the end of February 2011.
Next they moved on to the main house, where the historical
photos supplied by CART were invaluable in creating something that has sadly long gone. The intention is to
create a full 3D model of the exterior and interior, that can be viewed on the CART web site.
Ian uses AutoCAD2010, Sketch-up and 3D StudioMax software so far and has found the project both challenging
and very enjoyable.
UPDATE - 12th January 2012 - We are very pleased to inform you that after 13 long
months of work by CART members, Bill Ashby and Ian Edwards, the Coleshill House Reborn project has now
produced a complete set of CAD drawings of Coleshill House and the other key outbuildings.
THE DRAWINGS
The video below can also be viewed fullscreen. In order to see more detail we would advise changing the
video quality to 1080p. This will display it in full HD. You can pause the video at anytime to view each
slide for a longer period of time.
The full watermarked plans can be download as a PDF on our member's website. This will mean you can zoom
in to view more detail.Not a member? Join here
You can see below some of Ian's images and video and gauge the progress he has made so
far.
