Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons Bridges

Constructed for the Japanese garden at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons; Raymond Blanc’s Michelin two star hotel and restaurant, this bridge replaced an inferior glulam structure that had suffered serious decay. We kept the main carriage beam sections substantial as section and longevity are correlated.

Chinoiserie and Japonisme were popular mid 17th century, here it is revived very successfully for Raymond Blanc’s newly refurbished Japanese garden. The bridge was assembled manually with the use of a gantry scaffold for lifting the main beams into position, as no vehicle could get right up to the bridge site.

The Mushroom Bridge was built over a shipping container used for growing Chanterelles and other fungi for the restaurant. The arch is jointed from three curved sections of timber as are the handrails. Chestnut poles were cut to create the ‘slab-wood’ cladding to disguise the container, the door being quite invisible. Baluster are also Chestnut poles with ends shaped with a ‘stale engine’ or ‘rounder’ to allow them to be fixed.

Stainless steel flitches can be seen here embedded into the ends of the main carriage beams and which serve to lift the beam ends above ground level to ensure their longevity. The handrails are an oval section with a scroll terminations making a very appealing completed structure.

Though small we are very proud of this lovely bridge called the Zig-zag. We used Teak left over from another job and shaped the handrail posts and rails by hand. Teak has an extremely durable classification and is likely to endure for 80 or more years.

Rails are fixed to the posts with stainless steel coach screws and plugged with square billets of Teak. The client resisted utilising no slip inserts on this and his other bridges preferring to keep the surfaces slip free through maintenance.