Progress continues to be made in the restoration of St Mary’s Chapel. The last blog showed the lower layers of the lime mortar being applied to the walls and ceiling. Most of the stages to full application went well. However, a problem was uncovered in the apse area. The walls were too damp to allow the lime mortar to bind. This was tracked down to faulty pointing on the outside of the wall. The wall is about a foot thick, and the pointing was only filling the gaps between stones to a small depth. As a result, the weather had caused surface damage allowing rain to get into the gaps and permeate right through to the inside. The only answer was a thorough re-pointing, which was achieved (as can be seen in the photographs) but there was then a long wait for the water already in the wall to clear and dry on the inside.
Eventually that was achieved and the last coat of mortar was added in January. The current appearance is shown in the photographs. All the mortar is to be painted, but this specialist coating cannot be applied until the plaster has dried sufficiently. Most is getting near, but not in the apse yet – and the cold damp winter has not helped!
One of the features of St Mary’s Chapel is the wood panelling. Most of these were originally the ends of pews dating from the days when worshippers had to provide their own seating. Having gone to the expense of building a ‘desk’, people carved the ends to make it clear who owned that pew. Their positioning on the walls date back to the last restoration of the Chapel in 1898. Many of these panels had to be removed, initially when there was an outbreak of dry rot 15 years ago, and others more recently to enable the lowering of the floor when the wheelchair access was created 5 years ago. Some deterioration has inevitably occurred over the years, some due to moisture or rot, so the opportunity has been taken to restore and repair the wood as necessary. There was also the need for a new piece of woodwork to cover the scarcement in the north wall. All this work was undertaken in the workshops of our contractors, North Group, who have produced a really high-quality result. There are a couple of photographs of this work underway.
The third major undertaking has been a re-wiring of the Chapel. Most of the cabling is under the plaster – there is a photograph of the early stages in the previous blog. The main difficulty arose with getting the cables round the two pillars at either side of the apse where there was no plaster to hide them. The initial attempt is shown in a photograph and it was agreed that a less obtrusive, more specialist cable was required. The second photograph shows the new cable in place – and it is almost hidden. The same cable was also used for the short section leading into the new light fittings to allow a closer fit to the ceiling.
