Putting it back together

At the end of week 18 of the renovation of the nave, all the reinforced limecrete bases for the new tiles have been laid, so you can actually move around the church without turning an ankle. The tiling begins next week, starting in the North East corner. The floorboards of the pew bays are being reinstalled but set level to the rest of the floor. In the front or eastern bays we are reusing the old floorboards which are being sanded down and will be coated and varnished. The rear bays will have new boards to match. Meanwhile work on the cracked pilar has gone ahead. The core of the column is sound, so it looks like it was just a bad Victorian repair job on the facing stone. There was no mortar attaching the replacement store to the core, so the weight of the building was pushing the stone out. A repair to the repair used cement, which is harder than the stone, so instead of the mortar flexing the stone had to, causing the pressure fractures. Ellis & Co. stonemason Martin Buckler is shown fixing the new stone into position.