5 minute read
CANTERBURY
Goldfields foreman, Ben Oram, holds two prized finds from the rubble inside the Cathedral walls.
CREDIT: CCRL
The walls are talking
Next month the team reinstating Christ Church Cathedral will be halfway through the stabilisation phase. There have been some surprising finds thus far.
Impressive progress has been made on the Christ Church Cathedral under the supervision of lead contractor Naylor Love since work began in May last year. Six storeys of scaffolding are in place and a total of 32 piles have been screwed into the ground – some up to 18 metres long – while three giant steel frames are now bracing various parts of the Category 1 heritage building.
Two teams of stonemasons are among the contractors on-site. One from Stoneworks and the second from Goldfield Stone Limited, whose current focus is the careful deconstruction of the badly damaged South Transept.
Goldfield’s Director, Mark Whyte, says they’re about a third of the way through.
“It’s going really well. The Cathedral has always been the jewel in the crown of Christchurch’s gothic revival buildings and, as we take it apart, we can see just how beautifully made it is.”
“The quality of the workmanship is sharp. Each stone was cut by hand, but the lines are crisp, clean and accurate. Every element was well-measured, correctly made and joggled. This building was not just slapped up – a huge amount of care went into it.”
Mark and his team spend much of their time on scaffolding, up to 28 metres above ground, wearing respirators as they take the Transept down, stone by stone.
“It’s not easy,” says foreman, Ben Oram. “Some of the stones are more than 400kg, and we can’t go inside the building so we’re having to pull them out blind and then get them down to the ground without damaging them.”
The project is being delivered by Christ Church Cathedral Reinstatement Limited (CCRL). The company ensures heritage professionals oversee the removal, cleaning, numbering and packing of the pieces.
Heritage consultant, Jenny May, says everything is carefully assessed to see if it is able to be reused.
“We’re going to great lengths to protect the heritage fabric – it’s a thorough process. Each stone to be reused is numbered and put on a numbered pallet, which is photographed before transportation to storage until it can be reinstated in the future.”
The exact location of each pallet is recorded on a smartphone/tablet app so the team knows exactly where to find any particular stone. Around 1,400 stones have been removed from the site so far.
“The reinstatement will be like a giant jigsaw puzzle,” says Ben.
As the work has unfolded, the team has also made some surprising discoveries, such as the quality of the rubble which fills each wall’s two stone wythes. “There’s been a huge amount of pristine 19th century Halswell basalt which you just can’t get today,” Ben observes.
Mark agrees. “A lot of those stones have been dressed – they’ve got flat profiles. Our strong suspicion is that they came from a building that was deconstructed but who knows what that building was.”
Ben says a highlight was finding a carved limestone hood mould.
“It is exactly the same as those which sat above the lancet window so was clearly a leftover that someone just threw in with the rubble. Best of all it’s perfectly preserved, while its counterparts are slightly misshapen
due to more than a century of being outside, carbonisation and cleaning. It’s a great find as now we have an exact example of how they looked originally.”
120-year-old pencil marks were another welcome find. “On some of the stones you can see where the banker mason marked out his lines for carving. It’s pretty cool,” says Mark Whyte.
Fellow stonemason, Nathan Hall, says they’re all aware of the importance of the project.
“When I started someone warned me that the world would be watching us. I don’t know if that’s true but I do know that there is significant interest and everyone on-site is taking real care and doing the best job we can.” Jenny says the whole process is eye-opening. “When you examine the sheer size, weight and amount of stone that has been employed in building our Cathedral, you cannot help but wonder at the difficulties the original builders had to overcome to manually raise stones of such huge weight and size to such great heights.”
Ben Oram says when the going gets tough they simply look to the past for inspiration.
“I know that every stone I take down was a heck of a lot harder to put up and the crews that did that more than a century ago didn’t have access to the technology that we do.” n
Stonemasons carefully deconstruct the South Transept 28-metres above ground.
CREDIT: CCRL CREDIT: CCRL
Off-site activity
The project team is just as busy off-site too.
The Government-appointed Christ Church Cathedral Reinstatement Trust is progressing fundraising, with around $50 million needed for the project’s $154 million budget.
A core focus for project delivery company, Christ Church Cathedral Reinstatement Limited, is finalising the design of the Cathedral and Tower.
Project Director, Keith Paterson, says the design process ensures the project has plenty of access to heritage expertise.
“As well as the design team's heritage capability, we have three design committees – functional, heritage and liturgical – which work with CCRL to guide the design.”
Heritage consultant, Jenny May, architectural historian Dr Ian Lochhead and Heritage New Zealand’s Director Southern Region, Sheila Watson are involved in the committees.
Heritage architect, Jeremy Salmond, has also been an integral part of the design process, helping Warren and Mahoney ensure the overall concept, including the two modern buildings that will sit either side of the reinstated Cathedral integrate successfully.
“The Cathedral was designed purposefully. My job was to rediscover that intent, preserve that design philosophy, and then make sure the new buildings’ proportions, height and scale felt right in design terms. The feedback we’ve had to date shows we’ve succeeded,” says Jeremy Salmond.
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