September 16, 2026 / By rachel
On 18 September 2014, eight hydraulic jacks, several towers of hardwood blocks and a group of people trying to look considerably calmer than they felt, gathered beneath one of the Thames’s most recognisable buildings, and they were ready to raise the roof – and the ceilings, the doors, the walls, infact the whole kit and kaboodle.
For Week 28 of our #40Projects40Weeks series, we are looking back at the extraordinary day RRA co-ordinated raising a building! That’s right, the plan was to lift the entire historic Swiss Chalet on the banks of the Thames.
A Chalet with an Interesting Past
Difficult to miss, The Swiss Chalet, stands on the banks of the Thames as it nears Hampton Court. It is understood that the chalet was prefabricated in Switzerland and transported to England in 1882, where it became an ornamental garden building and boathouse for an estate and large house called Riverholm. This estate is long since gone, carved into smaller housing sites in the 1920s, leaving The Swiss Chalet as a striking reminder of a bygone era.
According to local legends the land and the building have some interesting stories, the land was bequeathed by the future Edward VII in settlement of a gambling debt and The Chalet allegedly owned at one time by Charlie Chaplin’s close friend, Fred Karno, and the base for many an exciting soirée. Historians have never established whether the stories are true, but it feels oddly appropriate for a building that is anything but conventional.
Its riverside setting may have been picturesque, but it also left the timber structure vulnerable to flooding. The answer was simple to describe and rather more complicated to achieve: lift the whole building.
Waiting for Daylight
Raising a historic building in one piece meant lifting the roof, floors, walls, windows and decorative timberwork together, while keeping the entire structure level and avoiding damage as it separated from its existing supports and foundations.
For Peter Taylor, RRA’s Conservation Architect at the time, the most critical moment of raising a building was that first centimetre of separation. So, when a narrow line of daylight finally appeared beneath the structure, there was a collective sigh of relief as the whole team stopped holding their breath. The Chalet was free and, even better, it was still in one piece.
Eight hydraulic jacks raised the building in stages of approximately ten centimetres. After each movement, hardwood blocks were added beneath it to form supporting towers, known in the trade as ‘Cribbing Towers.’ It was essentially an enormous game of reverse Jenga, but with an entire timber building sitting on top and very little tolerance for a misplaced block or even a strong gust of wind.
One Carefully Coordinated Day
The lifting procedure was completed within a single day through close coordination between RRA, structural engineers Fairhurst and specialist Dutch lifting company Mammoet.
Although Mammoet was accustomed to moving unusual and immensely heavy structures, The Chalet presented a unique challenge: a relatively lightweight ,historic building whose windows, roof tiles and intricate timber fabric all needed to remain intact.
The procedure raised the entire building 1.5 metres to enable permanent supports to be installed underneath, ready for The Chalet to be lowered onto the new structure, settling at approximately 1.2 metres above its former position. Because the original ground floor had already been somewhat elevated, so the additional volume was enough to create a new, full-height storey at river-level.
Although, flood protection was the reason for the lift, the new floor to the building was an added bonus. The client subsequently turned the space into a heated indoor beach with real sand, afterall once you have lifted an entire building, just using the space for storage probably seemed a bit unimaginative.
Watch the short film of the lifting below or for a more detailed look at the process of raising a building with comments from the team onsite, visit Upwardly Mobile on our You Tube channel.
To see more about the Swiss Chalet flood protection visit the project page.
This project is part of our #40Projects40Weeks series, celebrating 40 years of RRA Architects and the people, ideas and occasional high-stakes games of Jenga that have shaped our work. Follow the series on our News page.
Thank you to Absolute Homes for kindly allowing use of their photos for this story.
About RRA Architects
Established in 1986, RRA Architects works across all sectors and provides architectural services from initial feasibility and design through to completion. We work nationally, with projects primarily across Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire, the Cotswolds, the West Midlands, South West and South Wales.