The completed Garden Café at The Newt in Somerset — a glass restaurant structure sitting on 140 rotary bored bearing piles above the walled garden

This project stands as one of the most technically demanding and rewarding jobs we have ever undertaken. Working at The Newt in Somerset — one of the most celebrated luxury estates in the country — we were tasked with installing the piled foundations and king post retaining wall for the Garden Café Restaurant, a stunning glass structure that appears to float above the historic walled garden.

The project demanded an extraordinary level of precision engineering, environmental sensitivity, and creative problem-solving. It called on every skill we have — and pushed us to develop new ones. We are immensely proud of what was achieved here, and the finished building is a testament to what becomes possible when an exceptional team raises their standards to meet an exceptional brief.

Scope of Works

Rotary Bored Bearing Piles

The Garden Café's structure required 140 rotary bored piles at 500mm diameter, each bored and concreted to depth before receiving a 140mm diameter galvanised circular hollow section — the steel columns that ultimately support the café floor above. A further 10 piles at 450mm diameter were installed specifically for the king post retaining wall.

The site presented an immediate environmental constraint: a number of established native trees were located within and around the working area, and their root systems had to be protected throughout. This ruled out any heavy-handed approach and required precise plant positioning, careful pile location sequencing, and constant awareness of the ground conditions around the tree root zones.

Water Ingress — Adapting on Site

During the piling programme, water ingress was encountered in a number of the rotary bored pile bores due to the ground conditions present on site. The challenge was how to deal with this effectively without using a larger, heavier machine that would risk damaging the root systems of the established native trees in the area.

The solution was to deploy our D1000h drop hammer rig — a far more compact machine — to drive steel temporary casings into the affected pile positions. This controlled the water ingress without the need for a larger rig, protected the tree roots, and kept the programme moving. It is a good example of the kind of practical, site-driven decision-making that separates an experienced team from others.

Engineering Excellence — The Custom TesCar Attachment

The most technically remarkable aspect of this project was the positional tolerance requirement for the 140mm diameter galvanised CHS piles: every single one had to be installed to within ±11mm of its design position and grid line. Across 140 piles, on a live construction site with variable ground conditions, this is an extraordinary standard to achieve.

To meet it, we turned to our in-house engineering capability. Working with Noakes Engineering, our team custom-designed and fabricated a bespoke attachment specifically for the Kelly bar rotary table of our TesCar 2.5 CFa piling rig. The attachment acted as a precision guide, holding each 140mm CHS pile in perfect vertical alignment and ensuring it followed the grid line exactly during installation. Without it, achieving ±11mm across the full pile grid would have been impossible.

The attachment was machined in-house on a Bridgeport milling machine — a slitting saw operation to create the CHS guide profile — before being assembled and taken to site. It is a clear demonstration of what becomes possible when piling expertise and engineering manufacturing capability sit under the same roof.

The Result

The Garden Café at The Newt in Somerset is now open and has received widespread acclaim as one of the finest dining experiences in the country. The glass restaurant structure sits precisely where our piles placed it — above the historic walled garden, supported on 140 galvanised CHS columns, all installed to a tolerance that left no margin for error.

For our team, this project remains a benchmark. It required precision on a scale we had not previously been asked to deliver, demanded creative engineering solutions under real site conditions, and was completed while protecting the mature trees and historic landscape that make The Newt so special. We are extremely proud of every aspect of it.

If you have a technically demanding piling project — one where precision, environmental sensitivity, and bespoke engineering are all required — get in touch with our team.