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Renewal of Altar Floodlights.

The ancient halogen altar floodlights finally were laid to rest at the end of March 2009. Changing bulbs was difficult enough and required a very long ladder and nerves of steel but when the units themselves stopped working the Restoration Committee was faced with a problem. Although technology had moved on and replacement lights were available which used high intensity gas filled bulbs producing twice the light at half the wattage and with a lifespan several times greater than their predecessors, accessing the workspace was not going to be easy.

Working off ladders for all but light work of short duration goes against all modern health and safety guidelines and other mobile elevating working platforms were either too big to get through the building or too heavy for the church floor to bear. Conventional tube and fitting scaffold would do it but would be expensive and time consuming to erect and dismantle.

I approached Speedy Hire, one of our supply chain partners on my current concrete repair contract in Birmingham for advice and Neil Westwood travelled down to Witley to look at the job. It didn’t take him long to measure up and provide the solution to the difficult access problem – he recommended an 8 metre high lightweight aluminium tower with a specially adapted counterbalanced cantilever section which would get us into corners that the rectangular tower couldn’t reach. Neil arranged with Ian Wright of Speedy’s Worcester Branch to pick up the equipment from Cardiff, delivered it to Witley and then waived the hire charge!

Our sincere thanks go to Speedy Hire for their expertise and their generous contribution to the upkeep of this glorious piece of our national and local heritage. The Church Committee would also like to thank Kevin the electrician, Martin and Phil and Steve the roofer with the long ladder who all got the job done.

                                                                                                                                 
      C Nasmyth-Shaw         (Churchwarden)                    

What’s All That Scaffolding?

Visitors to the church can’t fail to notice that something is afoot. Access from the Witley Court frontage is barred and the tower is covered in scaffolding.

THE CHURCH IS OPEN AS USUAL but for safety reasons we have had to redirect access to the west driveway only. While the scaffolding was being erected overhead we had to close the west (main) door for a while but normal access has now been made safe and reinstated. We apologise for any inconvenience to the less able during the short time that access was limited to the rather difficult rear entrance.

So, what’s going on? Well, we have been aware for some time that the cupola (the dome above the clock tower) was showing signs of distress. Old stonework was often reinforced with iron bars, much as we use reinforcing steel in concrete today, but which are more susceptible to attack from the elements. In our case the copper sheathing to the dome split, water started to find its way into the stonework, corroded the iron that then expanded and spalled, or burst off the face of the stone. Once fully exposed to the weather, the wetting and corrosion systematically destroys the surrounding stone if left unchecked. More important than the damage to an historic building, if allowed to deteriorate to the point where bits started to fall off we would have a serious health and safety risk to people on the ground. We cannot risk either of these so we are tackling this important restoration project now before things get any worse. Doing nothing is not an option. .

If this problem were at ground level it would be a relatively simple job to repair but at 35 metres in the air it becomes a real headache. The scaffolding alone takes two weeks to erect and costs £30,000 and if you have to spend that much on scaffolding it makes sense to do some other jobs while you are up there. We intend to repair the damaged stonework and of course we must replace the damaged copper sheathing on the dome to make it watertight and prevent further corrosion problems and we can give the structure some further resistance to corrosion by putting a small electrical charge into the bars – known as ‘Cathodic Protection’.

The cross and orb which surmounts the dome is to be reguilded and the clock faces are to be to restored to their former glory, whilst inside the tower, the clock mechanism, currently restricted to a single face, will be reinstated on all three faces and given a mechanised winding system. (Winding by hand lasts just 5 days and involves a dangerous climb up the inside of the tower by an intrepid volunteer to whom we owe a great debt of gratitude)

Finally we have an old broken bell, the installation of which has also damaged the stonework of the tower and we are going to replace that with a new, smaller bell, properly mounted.

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Britain's finest Baroque Church.  St. Michael and All Angels Church, Great Witley,  A443 Worcester - Tenbury Wells road, 10 miles north-west of Worcester.    As the parish church for the villages of Great Witley and Little Witley  it is used regularly for services and concerts. The church is open to visitors daily. The church, now almost fully restored, displays a splendour which is unique amongst country churches in Britain, with exquisite gilded decorations throughout, numerous paintings by Antonio Bellucci, ten painted glass windows depicting scenes from the New Testament, highly decorative carving and a large monument by Rysbrack. It also has a fine organ, its case being from the instrument on which Handel played.   Many musicians consider its acoustics for music to be as fine as any building of its size outside London