Pret A Manger, Glasgow Fort

Project year: 2017
Posted: 24 Mar, 2021

Materials:

2000m2 Caithness Paving, Caithness Setts

Details:

Glasgow Fort is a large out of town shopping and leisure park, on the East side of Glasgow. With almost 100 outlets including fashion shops and restaurants, the paved areas need to be robust and able to deal with spillages and significant daily foot traffic.

The Caithness paving we supplied for the central square area in and around the Pret, a Manger restaurant showcases just how beautiful and varied this stone is, as well as how practical it can be when used in this type of setting.

This ancient material from the North of Scotland boasts a very high flexural strength which makes it extremely suitable for heavily trafficked pedestrian areas. Often thought to be a predominantly dark grey material, once exposed to sunlight, comes to life with an array of colour bands from oranges and ochres through to hints of blues and greens.

When quarried this stone shears naturally to thickness bands of ±5mm and is best procured with the natural riven surface, which is extremely non-slip and yet also very flat. As we did here we can further select the thickness bands at the quarry to ensure pallets are of like thickness to aid the ease and speed of laying larger areas together.

Our initial project order was for over 2000m² of 70 to 80 mm thick sawn sided paving in fixed widths of 200mm, by random lengths of 400 to 800mm. To minimise wastage at the quarry and to keep the price competitive, taking random lengths for Caithness paving is the best and most environmentally friendly way to order this stone. As the project progressed we supplied a further 500m² of paving as well as some Caithness setts.