Heritage Lottery Fund Project/ January report
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Another year already! And the work on the church windows continues apace. Work on the east end of the church was completed before Christmas and the scaffolding has now been removed. The new stonework looks good and the windows are much clearer.
After a Christmas break, the masons were back on site installing the new stone in preparation for the windows on the south side of the church. This area of the stonework restoration Project has now been completed apart from fine tuning the windows for the re-insertion of the glass.
The glass in the ‘new’ window in the north aisle was made up of fragments of old glass put together in ‘garish’ patterns either at the time of the Victorian modernisation and restoration work or, more probably, after the insertion of the new glass in the east end of the church at the end of the Victorian era. The colours, newly cleaned, now look spectacular in good light, so will be well worth a visit once the scaffold has been removed.
In all these windows new stone has been blended with sound ‘old’ stone. The aim is not just to get rid of the old but to conserve it wherever possible.
This rare architectural structure continues to amaze everyone who looks at it, including the stonemasons who have never seen its like before. Meanwhile, photography and video-photography is being stored to enable us to have a full record of the Project.
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The porch roof has been cleared of rotten and poor mortar, joints cleaned and pins put in place to secure the old stone and prepare for new stone. As we near the end of January, the new stone is being inserted into the porch roof. Due to the nature of the porch, it was not possible to get accurate template for the stone. Instead blocks have been cut to fit with fine cutting taking place on site. This has not been either for the masons either as they are working in a very tight space. For us, however, the work will be well worth it.
