Member Article

P C Henderson Hardware Specified for Elephant House in Wales

Bowburn based sliding and folding door hardware manufacturer - P C Henderson - has been specified for the main access door to an elephant house at Skandavale Monastery in Carmarthen, Wales.

The monastery, which is home to a resident community of 25 monks and nuns, welcomes over 90,000 pilgrims to worship in its three multi-faith temples each year. As well as its temples, the monastery is also home to an onsite hospice and animal sanctuary.

The most famous resident of the monastery’s animal sanctuary is Valli, a three tonne Sri Lankan elephant who resides in an enormous purpose built elephant house. Built just five years ago, the elephant house features heated walls, sandpits, a waterfall, plunge pool as well as a large sliding access door, measuring 3.9m x 3.2m, which Valli opens herself.

After just five years the original sliding door hardware (not manufactured by P C Henderson) was unable to cope with the force in which Valli uses her trunk and head to open the door and so the track collapsed, meaning a replacement was needed.

Brother Stephan, who resides at Skandavale, contacted P C Henderson to specify a track which would be robust and hard wearing enough to cope with Valli’s strength. The door itself weighs 500kg but due to the extra force being used, our Straight Sliding 307 system was specified, which can cater for doors weighing up to 2000kg.

Brother Stephan commented “Prior to the new home being built, Valli lived in a different elephant house which utilised P C Henderson’s sliding door hardware for the main access door. This lasted the full lifetime of the home, approximately 15 years, despite the huge scale of force being subjected by Valli. When the hardware on the new home started to bend after just 5 years, there was no doubt that we would go back to using P C Henderson.

We’re very pleased with the new system, which is now fully installed. It’s easy to see that the design and material of the track and components are of the highest quality and we’re confident it will withstand the test of Valli over the years“.

Situated in over 300 acres of woodland and pasture in South West Wales, Skandavale Monastery is ran entirely by full time volunteers and relies solely on voluntary donations to keep it running.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Stephanie Lee .