A Shropshire firm has won a top national conservation award after using pioneering techniques to save tiled story panels – described as a delightful snapshot of the Edwardian age – at two children’s wards being demolished in a hospital redevelopment.

Eura Conservation in Halesfield, Telford, scooped the Anna Plowden Trust Award for Research and Innovation in Conservation at the 2010 Conservation Awards in London.

Eura’s was one of two projects chosen to receive the award, and received a framed certificate and £2,000.

The 68 hand-painted tiled panels, mostly depicting nursery rhymes, were in two children’s wards at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle, and were painted by artists such as William Rowe, JH McLennan, and Margaret E Thompson. Although not listed, it was decided that they should be saved if possible, along with a further 18 text panels in other parts of the hospital in what is thought to be the largest such collection in the world.

In coming up with a method, Eura drew on experience gained when it saved wall panels at Manchester Free Trade Hall – it was about to be demolished – where musicians had over the years signed their names on the plaster.

With individual removal of tiles certain to cause damage and breakages, Eura instead used a diamond wire saw – like an industrial cheese cutter – to cut through a vertical slice of the wall behind the panels, allowing them to be removed in one piece.

The front of the tiles had to be specially reinforced during the process.

The panels were restored to as-new condition at the Telford firm and returned to the hospital in frames to be displayed in a range of new locations.

Also honoured at the awards was Laura Hinde for her use of state-of-the-art analytical techniques to examine the white surface material and materials used in the paintings at the National Trust’s Dudmaston Hall, near Bridgnorth.

She received a Commendation in The Student Conservator of the Year Award.