Week 7 - Tombs and Challenges

It is the end of week seven of the Uplift restoration project at Saint Mary's: we have had further discoveries and also a significant challenge.

The Ellis & Co. team have begun filling the floor voids in the south aisle and rear of the church with a marvellous material called Glapor (pronounced glypoor). It looks like coal but is actually recycled foamed glass, so very light. It replaces hardcore and has both insulating and damp-proofing qualities. This is part of our objective to make the church warmer and more energy efficient.

Alongside the burial vault mentioned last time, we have uncovered another vault which still has it covering stones intact. We won't excavate it but it is interesting to see a complete vault is still preserved.

It has now become clear that when the Victorians renewed the floor, they dug out the soil from the floor of the church in the area occupied by the pews, until recently, and heaped that up to form the basis of the tiled aisles or walkways. They only put a 20 mm screed of sand and cement on top of this soil and rubble, on which they laid the tiles. The underlying soil is quite damp and this is the reason why the tiles have been heaving and collapsing. By modern standards you need a minimum depth of 75 mm of limecrete and probably some form of damp proofing underneath.

This means that we will have to take up all the tiled floor ways and excavate down 100 mm. It also means we have to find a new home for 22 m³ of consecrated soil. Think 25 large builders grab bags full. That is quite a challenge. Being consecrated means it cannot leave the confines of the church and church yard, or must go to another consecrated space. Because of the presence of human remains we will need to carefully excavate these areas, sifting them for bone fragments and re-interning those within the church.

All this is going to add another three or four weeks into the program, though that will not necessarily push back our reopening date because we have allowed some contingency, both in terms of time and finance, for the surprises we expected to encounter beneath the floor.

It does mean we will have to put back our planned tours of the church because the tiled walkways are in quite a fragile state and we need to create a safe access route through the church.