Harwell Restoration saves 6,500 smoke-affected books

Polygon’s subsidiary Harwell Restoration, Europe’s leading document and specialist contents restorer, was contacted by a university in England regarding a fire in an adjacent room of their university library. As a result of the fire, several books were damaged by the smoke.

Harwell Restoration was on-site in no time at all to conduct an assessment. After one week of hard work from the Harwell team, all 6,500 books were cleaned and returned swiftly so the library could reopen with minimal disruption to the students. Shortly after the work was completed, the team received an astounding response from a librarian at the university.  

‘The speed in which you responded to my original email, was able to visit and assess the damage on-site and carry out the cleaning of the book stock all within a week was beyond impressive. I’m so glad that we had the Priority User Service agreement in place with you. Many, many thanks' says James Stephens, librarian at the university.

Harwell provides a range of services to meet the needs of their insurer clients, as well as specialist service solutions for libraries, archives and museums looking for support in collections care.

Commercial Document Restoration

Harwell has the largest dedicated capacity for document restoration in Europe and has extensive experience in major loss restoration projects in both commercial and archival settings. Harwell recovers, stabilises, dries, sanitises and cleanses damaged records after a fire, flood, escape of water, explosion, biohazard and building contamination. They understand how damage to critical documents can impact business continuity and therefore, offer a fast-track restoration service where documents can be returned to end-users within a 24-hour window.

Learn more about our services HERE.