Castle Drogo in Dartmoor undergoes repair work to become water-tight

A £13 million 5-year project to make Castle Drogo water-tight has reached its half-way point.

Scaffolding is starting to come down on the stately home near Drewsteignton on the edge of Dartmoor but it will soon be going back up again as the next phase gets underway on the North Wing.

The National Trust aims to make the building water-tight for the first time since it was finished in the 1930s.

It is an enormous project and involves removing the roof, dismantling walls, replacing windows and re-pointing more than 40 miles of joints.

Castle Drogo was built between 1911 and 1930. It was designed by the architect Edwin Lutyens.

He used asphalt on the flat roof, but it was still a new product and was prone to cracking. As a result, Drogo has never been watertight.

The National Trust is replacing the roof, which involves removing hundreds of tonnes of granite blocks and putting them back again.

It is also replacing thousands of metres of cement pointing and refurbishing more than 900 windows.

The castle is particularly susceptible to Dartmoor’s weather conditions.