Cembrit, a specialist in natural and fibre cement slates, has supplied 3000 Moorland fibre cement slates to a new Neurological Care Centre in Peterborough. Eagle Wood, built at a cost of £10 million centre, is owned and managed by PJ Care. Built by Castleoak, a specialist in care home construction and designed by PRC Group, a Surrey-based architect, the project made the shortlist in the annual Pinders Healthcare Design Awards.
Castleoak has built over 150 care homes and 3000 apartments in care villages across the country. Eagle Wood is a 105-bed, three-storey neurological care campus with four separate units designed to meet individual resident needs plus assisted living apartments. It includes a therapy centre, with a physiotherapy gym and hydrotherapy pool. The building features five separate self-contained units that each provides a distinct type of care tailored to different aspect of neurological nursing.
The steeply-pitched slate roofs have attractive dormer windows, and the Moorland slates complement the soft-toned brickwork and timber features, to give the centre a gentle, welcoming look. Moorland slate is manufactured with a smooth surface and dressed edge to give the appearance of a natural slate from ground level, whilst retaining all the fixing benefits of man-made slate. Each slate is pre-holed and is a consistent size, weight and thickness, ensuring regularity and simplicity when fixing as they do not need to be graded and sorted as natural slates do. Bracknell Roofing installed the roof and created a high quality and neat looking finish to the new facility.
“Cembrit’s Moorland slates were specified to us for this project for aesthetic reasons”, explains Paul Mannings, Partnerships Director at Castleoak. “The roof is excellent; the product quality is of a high standard, which was helped by the good workmanship. The care home has a dramatic roof line that comes from a high level, in some cases to about 2m above ground. It looks great, but from a practical point of view it was difficult to build and it was difficult to lay the long pitched roof, due to the inability to stand or crawl on slated areas. However due to the product and skill of the installer, the roofing fits nicely with the rest of the building and looks super.”
The Eagle Wood Neurological Care Centre was shortlisted in the Best Large Care Home category in the prestigious Pinders Healthcare Design Awards 2013. Each finalist was given £500 to donate to their chosen charity. PJ Care picked Headway Cambridgeshire which provides advice and support for people with brain injuries, as well as their families and carers. The charity holds regular therapy sessions at Eagle Wood for people in the local community who have suffered brain injuries.
Moorland’s are manufactured using Portland cement together with a non-asbestos formulation of blended synthetic and cellulose fibres. Each slate is pigmented during production and fully compressed. The edges are dressed and then the slates are finished with a high quality, semi-matt acrylic coloured coating to the top face and edges, and a clear binder to the back face.
Using skills built up over 80 years, Cembrit offers a wide range of fibre cement slates, corrugated sheets, and cladding and building board panels, as well as natural slates. Our factories operate Environmental Management Systems (EMS) to EN14001. Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) are available on all Cembrit manufactured ranges and Cembrit fibre cement slates are listed on the Greenbooklive.com register of environmental products. All Cembrit manufactured fibre cement products (slate, corrugated sheet, cladding, building board and associated fibre cement accessories) are manufactured in conformity with the relevant harmonised European Norms and therefore display a CE mark, performance and technical data on packaging. Quality levels at group factories are rigorously maintained to high standards with many products manufactured under the control of ISO 9001 and British Board of Agrément. Cembrit UK is a member of Cembrit Holding A/S of Denmark.