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00:01Britain's history is recorded in its monuments.
00:05Even before the Normans came and built their castles across the country,
00:08successive generations have left their mark on the landscape,
00:12in the landmarks they've left behind.
00:15But now those landmarks are crumbling.
00:18There's a section there which is quite bad.
00:20Centuries of wear and tear have taken their toll on these precious buildings.
00:24More of the structural members were suffering from corrosion than we expected.
00:28There's moss growing inside, so then the water backs up, then falls internally.
00:33They need constant care and maintenance in all kinds of conditions.
00:39You can see dust coming up. A hundred years old dust.
00:42Revealing treasures that have been hidden for centuries.
00:45We're unearthing the original bridge.
00:47All over the country, teams of highly skilled people are dedicating their lives
00:52to keeping our heritage standing.
00:54We need to be aware that we are a part of a cycle that's been going on for centuries.
00:59These are Britain's landmark fixers.
01:02And this is not just their story.
01:04They took nearly 6,000 old to drill. How marvellous.
01:08But the story of the buildings they look after.
01:11It's early morning in Canterbury.
01:27Heather Newton is walking to work.
01:30She works in a very special place because Heather is the head of conservation for the oldest cathedral in England.
01:43And right now, it's covered in scaffolding.
01:48We're in the precincts in front of the west front and the western towers of the cathedral.
01:54And they're covered in scaffolding because they're currently undergoing some major works to the roof and to the fabric,
02:01under the umbrella of the Canterbury Journey.
02:04The Canterbury Journey is a five-year, £25 million project to restore the decaying fabric of the cathedral,
02:12which has been crumbling for decades.
02:15It's a mammoth task.
02:17From fixing falling stonework.
02:19It's not just flakes of stone. You could get large bits falling off.
02:23To replacing rotten timbers.
02:25My goodness me. Death watch? Absolutely.
02:28Extreme engineering.
02:30Can you drop it down into that position?
02:32Sculpting repairs.
02:34This is so that the masons who are going to carve this have got something to work to.
02:39Or tricky heavy lifting.
02:41The thing about stone is it's very heavy. It's also very delicate.
02:45And all of this while working round a cathedral in the middle of a global pandemic.
02:52Now the project is rushing to finish these massive repairs on time and on budget.
02:59This is a huge project.
03:02There hasn't really been anything quite this size.
03:06Probably since they rebuilt the North West Tower.
03:09Or when they built Belharie, which was completed in 1504.
03:13So that's some time ago.
03:22Morning at Canterbury Cathedral.
03:25Some of these have been marked up already, haven't they?
03:27Yeah, there's a few.
03:28Heather is up on the tower scaffold with Chief Mason Tony, assessing the condition of the stone.
03:34We actually go over stone by stone.
03:37So any stone that's identified as in need of replacement gets sprayed with what we call the blue dot of death.
03:43So that the masons who come on site know exactly where to go.
03:48I think the mullion's a good candidate for replacement.
03:51What mullion?
03:52Yeah.
03:53This side of the cathedral is so exposed to the elements that the central mullion of some window frames has completely weathered away.
04:00We've also got one of the gemstones there.
04:02Even so, the selection team are keen to preserve the historic fabric of the building when marking the stones for replacement.
04:09The first criteria of picking the stone is to see if it's an original stone.
04:13Obviously we will try and keep it if possible.
04:16That stone's in relatively okay condition.
04:19It should last at least another 50 years.
04:22The one above it is starting to erode a few little cracks appearing.
04:26So we may do a little bit further investigation when we take this stone out.
04:30It is so difficult to cost this work because until you actually start to open up the building and you look at it you don't really know what's going on.
04:40Part of the problem is caused by the way in which the towers have been repaired in the past.
04:45This is a good example of an inappropriate repair.
04:49We have a very poor quality limestone and it's been fixed with a very hard dark grey sand cement mortar.
04:57And there's a very high percentage of cement in there.
05:00And we can see that the surface of the stone is very decayed and actually the carved detail had already dropped off.
05:07So anything falling from this height even a little tiny piece is obviously going to pose a hazard to anyone below.
05:14This kind of thing is a candidate for replacement.
05:22The cathedral was founded shortly after AD 597.
05:26So it's not surprising that it's showing its age.
05:29Canterbury Cathedral is as old as England.
05:33Why do we say this?
05:35Well, it goes back to the oldest dad joke in history.
05:38Because Pope Gregory was in Rome.
05:41He was in a slave market and he saw two boys that he thought were very unusual.
05:47And he asked who they were.
05:48And someone told him they were angles.
05:50And he was really quite struck by their beauty.
05:52And he said, they're not angles.
05:54They're angels.
05:56And everybody pretended to laugh because he was the Pope.
05:59And he became fixated with the idea of these people on the edge of the known world in Britain.
06:03And so he sent a monk, St Augustine, to come to Britain to Christianise it.
06:09And so Augustine landed, having crossed the channel in Kent, at Canterbury.
06:13And that's where he founded his first church.
06:16A small Saxon cathedral stood on the site of Canterbury until England fell under control of the Normans in 1066.
06:28Many medieval bishops, a bit like Egyptian pharaohs, have valued themselves in their power to build and leave a legacy.
06:35And the same is true of Archbishop Lanfrank, whom William the Conqueror put in as the new Norman Archbishop of Canterbury.
06:41To sweep away all the Saxon vestiges of old religion and have this new Norman style.
06:47It was very important to him.
06:48So, one year after the Norman invasion, the cathedral burns down.
06:54What a shame that must have been for Lanfrank, because he was a man looking for a place to make his mark.
07:04And fortunately, it makes way for his more elaborate building.
07:10The cathedral has grown since Lanfrank's time.
07:15It's gained a beautiful Gothic nave extending from the western end of the old Norman structure.
07:24The entrance to the nave is flanked by two tall towers, which are now in need of repair.
07:35In the cathedral drafting office, senior stonemason John is finishing off the drawings of the window tracery that Heather and Tony have marked for death.
07:45I've produced this drawing on plastic here, which is a full-size drawing of the new stone that we're going to put in.
07:52Everything starts with the building. Everything finishes, hopefully, with a stone going back to sit there for another 200, 300, 500 years.
08:02So, every stone that we produce has to be made for an individual position in the building.
08:08I'll produce a face mould, which is what I'm producing at the moment.
08:13We'll produce a section template, which is the through section of the stone.
08:17And the stonemasons will apply them to a block of stone, use them to scribe round.
08:21So, even pieces that look very similar are actually just subtly different.
08:27The stone that's been drawn here, this is a different stone for a different location.
08:32The external dimensions are all the same.
08:33But if I apply this template to this drawing, we can see that even though the external dimensions are all the same, these two curves are not the same.
08:44This stone is a good 8mm bigger than this one, which may not sound like a lot, but when we're aiming for the sort of degree of precision that we are aiming for, this would not be acceptable.
08:55We can't assume right angles, we can't assume level and true.
09:02Everything has to be measured, everything has to be checked, and then we make our stones to fit the space.
09:07So, that's why we make sure that each stone is individually produced and individually numbered and labelled on the drawing so that the masons, when they're fixing, know to select the right stone for the right location.
09:21John's completed drawings will now go to the stone yard, where the stonemasons will chisel a massive block of stone to fit the design he's created to the millimetre.
09:33But this is only one of the many tasks the custodians of the cathedral have on their hands.
09:39Canterbury's clock must be carefully removed for restoration, and the team make a disturbing discovery at the historic Christchurch gate.
09:47There it is. Hell's teeth.
09:57Until the 1830s, the Western Towers were asymmetrical. The reason for this was money.
10:04The Northwest Towers probably not gothicised at the same time as the Southwest Towers, because there simply wasn't the funding to do that. These projects are incredibly expensive. Stone is a luxury material and has always been that way. So there probably wasn't the funding there to do it.
10:22The Twin Towers did not become identical until the Victorian period, when an act of God showed the way.
10:29The other tower was left as a Roman nest tower with a beautiful sort of tall herringbone-led steeple. Then one stormy night, the steeple blew down and some of the tower came with it. So in the 18th century or early 19th century, it was rebuilt to match the Southwest Tower.
10:47In 1855, renowned clockmaker George Frederick Vale was commissioned to install a clock in the Southwest Tower. It was moved to the Northwest Tower in the 1980s, when its pendulum was replaced with an electric motor in the name of efficiency. But it is long due for an overhaul. So the cathedral has decided to take advantage of the tower scaffolding to remove the clock for repairs.
11:05It's the perfect time to call in experts to take it away for some very much needed TLC.
11:12However, when the men from the Cumbria Clock Company removed the clock face and its dial from the front of the tower, they discovered that the scaffolding can be as much a hindrance as a help.
11:19We had to take it inside of the scaffolding, up to three levels above, and then we wrapped the dial in cling film to stop any bits coming off.
11:26And then dropped it down the outside of the scaffolding.
11:33And then dropped it down the outside of the scaffolding.
11:38But when it came to removing the clock itself, the scaffold and its hoist proved a godsend.
11:53Every bit's been taken apart and numbered. It's all wrapped up, stripped into manageable bits, and then taken on the long journey through the roof space, and then out onto the scaffold, round the scaffold, into the lift, down to the ground, and into the van, and then back up to Cumbria before it's going to get its makeover.
12:18The hope is that the repairs will be all over before Christmas.
12:25The story of the towers shows that a Gothic knave like this does not come cheap, but the money that paid to build it came from murder.
12:36The King Henry II had fallen out with the Archbishop of Canterbury, who used to be his friend, Thomas Becket.
12:43And the two were in great conflict over which was more powerful, the church or the state.
12:49Henry thought that he had a friend in the Catholic church for him. He was going to help him. Didn't end up happening.
12:55And Henry, who was known for his violent rages, according to tradition, said,
12:59Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?
13:02In fact, it's almost certainly apocryphal. What he did say was something about,
13:06You're all a load of drones and wastrels, and I am being shamed by this low-born cleric.
13:11It was his phrasing which caused four knights to think,
13:16Oh, hang on. The king wants somebody to get rid of this archbishop. Well, we can do that.
13:21There was an opportunity to advance their careers here. That all curry favour with the king.
13:26It's one of the most dramatic scenes you can imagine. On a blustery winter's night on a 29th of December 1170,
13:33Four knights rode into the impregnable, vast Canterbury Cathedral.
13:38They plead with the bishop to get them to go with them, to be arrested, essentially, but he refuses.
13:44And one of them swings a blow at his head.
13:47And there, in his own cathedral, they murdered him.
13:52And there are first-hand accounts of his blood and his brains on the church pavement.
13:59The murder sent shockwaves round the Christian world and made Canterbury's fortune.
14:06He was immediately made a martyr and was given sainthood just a few years later.
14:13Even on the night Beckett was murdered, rags with his blood were taken round the town
14:18and miracles were recorded immediately.
14:20And then suddenly, Canterbury Cathedral becomes a site of pilgrimage.
14:29Beckett's murder and the pilgrimage industry it spawned were so important to Canterbury
14:34that it was depicted in the stained glass of the cathedral's windows.
14:38We are so lucky to have some absolutely fabulous stained glass,
14:42and some of it dating from the 12th century, but not long after Beckett's murder.
14:47Analysis of some of these windows show that they were made in 1180,
14:52just a couple of decades after Beckett's death.
14:55They and later windows are obsessed with Beckett's legacy.
15:00We know what his shrine looked like because it's depicted in the stained glass.
15:05As well as that, there are scenes with the pilgrims, scenes depicting miracles
15:10that were attributed to Beckett's intervention.
15:14So his life and his death and subsequent martyrdom are all shown in those windows,
15:22those extraordinary works of art.
15:25But like much of the cathedral, the windows are showing their age.
15:30The stained glass team are coming to the end of a 14-year programme
15:34of repair and restoration of all the cathedral's windows.
15:37They are currently working upon the roof of the nave,
15:43restoring the clear storey windows at the top of the building.
15:48Their job was made much easier by the need to repair the roof,
15:51because the cathedral has installed a safety deck suspended from the ceiling,
15:56on which they can work.
15:57We're reinstalling seven windows.
16:03They're in desperate need for conservation,
16:06so they were removed from the cathedral.
16:09We've been working on them in the studio, conserving them.
16:13The windows Laura and her colleague Dave are working on are not medieval.
16:17They are Victorian replicas installed by George Austin Jr. in the 1850s.
16:23George Austin was trying to replicate the medieval windows
16:26and he used enamels to harmonise with the dirt and corrosion
16:31that was on the medieval glass.
16:34He really understood medieval glazing
16:36and this was his own expression of that, really.
16:40For the last two years, the team has been working in the lab,
16:43carefully cleaning Austin's windows
16:45and replacing the lead that holds the glass in place.
16:49If a piece of glass is broken, we'd repair it using conservation-grade adhesives,
16:55but we try and follow the principle of minimal intervention.
17:00If we don't need to replace something, don't replace it
17:02and retain as much original material as possible.
17:08Now, they are reinstalling the windows above the nave.
17:11The panel, when it was made in the mid-19th century,
17:16it's a little bit smaller than the opening,
17:20so we're just having to add extra lead around the edge
17:24so that it's a nicer fit into this glazing groove.
17:27So we'll work around these lobes, the top and the other side.
17:37They fixed the lead in with cement.
17:39But the job's not over yet.
17:49A lot of condensation was forming on the inside of the windows.
17:53That moisture on the painted surfaces was causing damage.
17:57Over time, it will eat away at the glass.
18:00The solution we've come up with is to introduce the protective layer
18:05on the outside with the leaded pattern,
18:07which gives you the spirit of the stained glass.
18:11So that should just fit in there nicely.
18:16Such committed attention to detail reflects the whole team's dedication
18:20to the building.
18:21If we all went back in time, working with a team of medieval glazes,
18:26we make it for the building, even if God doesn't see it,
18:30people from below doesn't see it,
18:32what I always say is the building would know.
18:35So it's a case of doing your duty to the building, in my mind.
18:42I think the building was meant for stained glass.
18:45It's a different quality of light, isn't there,
18:47that comes through coloured glass.
18:49It's really rich and jewel-like.
18:52It's originally to let God's light shine through into the building.
18:56It's taken 14 years to get to this point,
18:59but there are still more windows to do.
19:03And at the Cumbria Clock Company,
19:05the repairers are working with the clock.
19:08Can you drop it down into that position?
19:19Dawn on the Cumbrian Dales.
19:22Not the most obvious place to find a master clockmaker,
19:25but this is the base of Keith Scobie Youngs,
19:28the man who's repairing Canterbury Cathedral clock.
19:32We specialise just in the restoration and conservation of church and public clocks.
19:42Canterbury Cathedral has been one of the clocks we've looked after for several years now.
19:47It's a wonderful machine made by George Frederick Vale in 1855.
19:57This clock is 165 years old,
20:00and I'm always impressed by actually how little wear there's been over those years,
20:05especially when you start to think about how many times these parts have operated.
20:09And it has been working away up until they started these major conservation works within the tower.
20:19Hello, John.
20:20Hiya. You all right?
20:21Hiya. Come to give you a hand to get this off.
20:23In the last few weeks,
20:25Keith and his team have repaired and cleaned all the clock pieces,
20:29then reassembled them for testing like a giant puzzle.
20:33The last thing to do is make sure it's all synchronised,
20:37so it will keep good time.
20:39So we're taking out the main striking barrel,
20:41these two large parts, which look like an oversized music box,
20:45which picks up onto the levers,
20:47which then go up to the bells in the tower.
20:51You all right? Yeah.
20:52One of the most tricky components
20:54Keith's team still have to work on
20:56is a device called the chime barrel.
20:59The chime barrel is literally a clockwork mechanism
21:02that clicks round to tell the cathedral's bells
21:05when to chime the quarter hours.
21:07You've got three timing marks across here
21:10and the corresponding marks up here.
21:12It's not as easy as it sounds.
21:14Take the chime barrel up a bit.
21:16They have to raise the barrel using a traditional pulley system
21:20known as a block and tackle,
21:22precisely align the timing marks,
21:24then drop the teeth perfectly into place.
21:27No, we've just got to come back one more.
21:30And the clock mechanism isn't easy to manhandle.
21:33The mechanism weighs in the region of 1.5 tonnes.
21:39We've dropped out of the seat there. Hang on a minute.
21:42Even in our world of turret clocks, this is a big clock.
21:45It's right there.
21:47Can you drop it down into that position? Like that?
21:50That is still a little bit off.
21:53This is clearly a tricky process
21:55and Keith's team needs to get it right.
21:58How does that look for you?
22:01Testing in a workshop like this is the important point.
22:05It takes the guesswork out when you're on site.
22:09Are we all right there, gents?
22:11That looks good to me. Yeah, me.
22:13You just have to be careful.
22:16And just gently bring these things into place.
22:20At times like these,
22:22thoughts of the original clockmakers are far from Keith's mind.
22:26Very often we kind of think about them.
22:28They would have used block and tackle.
22:30They'd have used ropes.
22:31That's it, isn't it, now?
22:33It would have been a similar procedure.
22:35The clock is working perfectly.
22:38Now all they have to do is take it apart again
22:41so they can return it to Canterbury
22:43and put it back together in the cathedral.
22:46You got that?
22:50One remarkable legacy of Canterbury's pilgrimage industry
22:54is the beautiful Christchurchgate.
22:57Christchurchgate was built to impress, and it does.
23:01And it's where pilgrims would have entered
23:03the sacred precincts of Canterbury Cathedral.
23:06What's really amazing about it,
23:10it's one of the few structures in the UK
23:13where the statues and the figurines on it are all painted.
23:16Most medieval buildings, churches and gates,
23:19were brightly painted.
23:21The gate itself that we see now
23:23was constructed between 1504 and 1521,
23:26and you can still see some of that colouring.
23:29You could see immediately why people were dazzled
23:31and would be awed before they even saw the cathedral itself.
23:36The gate reflects just how much money the monks were making
23:40out of the pilgrims who passed through it.
23:42Everybody is coming to the cathedral to be cured,
23:46to have a spiritual awakening,
23:48and when they're coming to the cathedral,
23:50they're bringing their money with them.
23:52The church could sell them vials of blood,
23:56holy relics, pilgrim badges, candles, holy water.
24:01But in the wider town, of course,
24:04there was lodging, there was hostelry,
24:07there was food, there was clothing,
24:09there was shoeing the horses.
24:11Pilgrimage was an industry.
24:13So Christchurch Gate speaks directly
24:16to Canterbury's wealth at the time.
24:18But now it's completely shrouded in scaffolding,
24:23as it undergoes essential repairs
24:26to the restorations made a century ago.
24:28Where they did a lot of cement-based repair,
24:31which is actually amazing,
24:33but some of that repair failed
24:35because it was much less permeable
24:38and much more rigid than the soft stone
24:40that it was plugged into.
24:42But the decoration of Christchurch Gate
24:45is literally weathering away.
24:47So Heather has fashioned a replacement for it.
24:50This is a clay maquette
24:52for a bit of running moulding
24:54on the underside of a weathering course
24:57on Christchurch Gate.
24:59It's quite chunky and bold and heavy-looking
25:02because it has to be seen from the ground,
25:04from a distance.
25:05This is actually to replace what's there now,
25:08which is a 20th-century interpretation
25:10of 16th-century carving.
25:12It has issues because the architect at the time,
25:15W.D. Caro, decided to change the profile of the moulding.
25:19Instead of dripping off, the rainwater actually tracks back
25:22and then it drips onto some detail below.
25:26And there is one little surviving piece
25:29of medieval carving that's left.
25:31It's very, very eroded,
25:32but this is more similar in proportions and depth.
25:38To make the replacement rain guard,
25:40Heather is going back to her roots as a sculptor.
25:44I'm just remodelling the underside of these leaves
25:48because they will be seen.
25:51The curves are just really unpleasant.
25:55I can work into the cast,
25:57but if you haven't got sufficient material
26:00to get the, you know, the shape that you want,
26:02then you need to make sure that it's built up beforehand.
26:05So I'm just putting some extra on now.
26:10We'll make up a really thin clay mixture,
26:12filling all the cracks.
26:14The maquette is a model of the moulding up on the gate.
26:18This is so that the masons who are going to carve this
26:21have got something to work to
26:23so they can take some measurements off and so on.
26:26It's a modern application of an ancient technique.
26:29For things like this, I think,
26:31there would have been a pattern.
26:33Whether it was a 3D pattern
26:35or whether it was just two-dimensional,
26:36I really don't know.
26:38You want everyone to be working from the same pattern.
26:44For Heather, keeping skills like this alive
26:47is as important as the building itself.
26:50It's expensive as well, you know,
26:52because it means that you have to train people.
26:55But personally, I still think
26:57it's very much worth that investment.
27:00Having finished finessing her clay maquette,
27:03Heather hands it over to Joel,
27:05who now has to make the cast for the stonemasons to work from.
27:09This clay blanket is laid over the top of a
27:12a cling film barrier on top of Heather's clay maquette.
27:16And then it's subsequently removed
27:19from the plaster jacket that's going on top of it.
27:21And it creates a negative space
27:23that will be occupied by the rubber.
27:25So this essentially is what the rubber's going to be.
27:27In essence, Joel is fashioning a clay representation
27:30of the void he wants to create around the maquette.
27:33Next, he pulls plaster over the clay.
27:39The plaster cure will take between 15 to 18 minutes to start to finish.
27:44The scrim does exactly the same thing as the bandage in a cast
27:49on a broken arm or leg.
27:52It's a reinforcement for the hard yet brittle material
27:55that makes the jacket as a mould.
27:57And without it, you just break the moulds, you just break in half.
28:01Once the plaster has set, Joel smooths it down,
28:04revealing the vents he's built into the mould.
28:07When the rubber is poured in, it will appear out of there.
28:12And we'll know that the rubber has reached that part of the mould
28:15and all the lower parts around it.
28:17Joel removes the clay blanket from the mould,
28:20leaving a gap between the plaster and the maquette,
28:23into which he can pour the latex rubber he is mixing.
28:27Well, the rubber is now flowing through the empty space in the mould
28:30to occupy the space that the clay blanket created.
28:34It's a delicate moment.
28:37Any bubbles in the mixture will transfer into the mould,
28:40ruining the whole process.
28:44One day later, the rubber has set
28:47and Joel is in the final stages of removing the maquette from the mould.
28:53Now the stonemasons can make plaster models of the frieze,
28:56which they will measure for their templates.
29:01But Heather's maquette will have to wait before it's installed.
29:05Because, as Joel is about to show her,
29:08the main spine beam that supports the roof of the gate
29:11is going to put all of the work on hold.
29:13So here we have it.
29:16Wow!
29:17Yeah.
29:18The end of the beam that's supposed to rest on the wall
29:20and hold the whole roof up is no longer there.
29:24There it is.
29:26Hell's teeth.
29:28Something's had a feast.
29:30Yeah.
29:31Death watch?
29:32Yeah, absolutely.
29:33It's that heady brew of long exposure to moisture,
29:36fungal infection,
29:37and then death watch doing the polishing off the rest.
29:40Look at that.
29:41That's been exposed to dampness for some time.
29:44You can actually feel that it actually is damp now
29:47and it doesn't take much to produce frass.
29:52Woodworm poo.
29:53Woodworm poo.
29:54Look at that.
29:55Heather realises that the cathedral has a massive problem on its hands.
29:59The bit that bears into the wall has disappeared
30:02and the repair that did that job has also disappeared.
30:06We haven't had a look at the other end yet.
30:08Is that the same?
30:09That's disappeared as well.
30:10Oh, sorry.
30:11We've just got the middle of the beam.
30:12The only thing supporting the beam that's supposed to be holding up the roof
30:16is the box structure of the roof itself.
30:19They'll need to repair this fast.
30:21But as head of conservation, Heather's prime directive is always to preserve as much original material as she can.
30:27The focus will be on trying to save the original beam because it's historic fabric.
30:34However, I think that might be quite a tough call.
30:38For now, the main thing holding up the Christchurch gate is the scaffolding they've put in place.
30:44Until the beam can be fixed, everything else is on hold.
30:59Up on the tower, John is preparing to replace the window he drew up for Heather and Tony.
31:05Today, we're going to replace this decayed piece of tracery here and we're going to break out all of this stone here.
31:11And we've got a new stone made to go into this shape to fit in here.
31:16The Victorian windows were embellished in the 1920s with a stone from Dalting in Somerset.
31:22They introduced this new cusp detail.
31:25They were changing the decorative scheme, making it more elaborate.
31:29But now, it's got to go.
31:33The Dalting stone is weathering really badly.
31:37It effectively falls off in your hands, so it was definitely in a pretty dangerous state
31:41because we're directly above the public where we are right now.
31:46I'm using power tools.
31:47The Victorian builders who did this before would have had to use a hammer and a chisel
31:52all the time that we're chopping it out.
31:55I'm aware that we're cutting into historic fabric here that's been in the building 200 years.
32:02I don't want to damage any more than I have to.
32:06So, despite using a big hammer, I'm still trying to be as careful as I can.
32:13So, that's the bulk of this stone taken out now.
32:16The new stone will go into this line here and we'll just be able to slot it in from above, lifting it in.
32:23This is quite a heavy stone.
32:24And slide it in, hopefully.
32:27Around 1538, the Benedictine monastery attached to the cathedral fell victim to the great dissolution of the monasteries initiated by King Henry VIII.
32:42Henry VIII wants to have divorced Catherine of Aragon and the Pope wouldn't let him remarry.
32:47Henry's solution was to get the Pope out of the picture.
32:50In order to do that, he effectively had to declare himself the head of the church in England, which he did.
32:54Of course, there are other reasons why Henry, you know, didn't get along with the Catholic Church.
32:58He was very jealous of the amount of money it had.
33:01Henry cedes the opportunity to take some of that wealth himself.
33:04And grab all the money that went into the monasteries and to the cathedrals like the one in Canterbury.
33:11In Canterbury's case, the king adopted an unusual strategy involving the martyred Thomas Beckett.
33:19So, Henry charges Beckett with treason.
33:22And he orders the dead saint to court.
33:25Because Thomas didn't turn up, having been dead for several centuries, he's declared a traitor.
33:29So, Henry sends his men to break up the tomb of Thomas Beckett and take all the wealth that had been generated by the pilgrim trade.
33:37It is said that it took 26 carts to carry all the treasures of Canterbury away.
33:43But the Reformation was not all bad for the Archdiocese of Canterbury.
33:48While Canterbury lost its shrine to Thomas Beckett, the Reformation wasn't all bad because the Archbishop of Canterbury became the head of the Church of England under the king, obviously.
34:00But it was still the most important cathedral in England.
34:07Up on the Christchurch roof, Joel is busy reinstalling the newly made repairs to the spine beam.
34:15It started off with a spectacularly rotten spine beam, structurally, and the remit was to cut it back, saving as much of the historical fabric as possible.
34:24It's quite a large amount that had to come off.
34:27Once the old beam was cut back, a new end had to be fashioned from a piece of seasoned timber.
34:34But all this will be for naught if they don't address the reasons why the old timber was rotting in the first place.
34:40A new stone pad has gone in to take the weight of the timber, and on top of that we have two slate pads.
34:47This should introduce ventilation into that niche, so if the roof does leak, it will not trap moisture into the end of the timber.
34:56The new piece can now be lowered into place.
35:00This is called a scarfing joint. They have to be a fit that is better than you would expect in normal carpentry
35:06because the structural integrity of the joint relies on the close-fitting nature of its execution.
35:12Once they've lowered it into place, Joel and his team bolt the new piece to the original timber using a modern conservation technique.
35:20The reason why it's done with these nuts is that it is always adjustable.
35:25If anything moves, it can be tightened up again.
35:28The fix has gone well.
35:30That's it.
35:31Put it in place.
35:32The roof of the Christchurch gate is secure once again.
35:36After having been sent away for restoration more than six months ago, a vital part of Canterbury Cathedral is finally returning home.
35:47Today we are welcoming the dial for the clock back to the cathedral for temporary display in the south-east transept because we're unable to fix it up on the tower at the moment.
36:00Are you alright there?
36:01The main reason it's not being installed is because the stonework is still being done around it.
36:06The last thing we want to do is to get the newly gilded surfaces and newly painted surfaces contaminated with all the stone and dust.
36:14How often do you get to see something that should be 120 feet up in the air?
36:18People can look at the engineering that went into making it originally and they can also admire the beautiful conservation work.
36:26At the Cumbria Clock Company, we all love following the craftsmen before us and to think that in perhaps 50 years' time another clockmaker will be undertaking the same work and kind of thinking of us.
36:40So in a way we live through that clock dial or that clock mechanism.
36:43The stone that will go into the window John is working on was made two miles down the road from Canterbury Cathedral in a large metal warehouse.
36:55Doesn't look like much from the outside, but it's here where Emlyn Harris and his team of stone carving masons turned simple blocks of French limestone into beautiful works of art.
37:06All stones start life in the drawing office and the drawing office produce what we call a cutting schedule and it's down to us to select the appropriate block, cut it to size and send it to the masons to be worked.
37:20The original stone for the cathedral was imported from Cannes in Normandy.
37:25Stone is a rich, powerful person's material and when the Normans came, one way of demonstrating how powerful they were was to build a cathedral and a castle out of stone literally taken out of the ground of France.
37:44It's very, very high quality building stone. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to source Cannes stone in very large block sizes. So we supplement it with stone from further southwest in France, near Poitiers.
38:01Carving the stone to shape is a laborious process.
38:05In order for that piece of stone to be worked, you'll be looking at around about two to three weeks of masons time, depending on the masons ability.
38:12The whole process is a fascinating mix of ancient and modern.
38:17We've got modern saws and lifting equipment and all of that, but the principle is the same as it was in medieval times.
38:23The stonemason works the stone by hand and is responsible for that stone.
38:28And that's something that we're really proud of and that we want to keep.
38:32In the past four years, Emlyn's team has cut something in the region of four and a half thousand stones, but that's just a drop in the ocean compared to the scale of the building.
38:43You can never really appreciate the undertaking of building a cathedral back in medieval times.
38:48We are just focusing on the odd stone here and there. Even with portly of saws, power tools, it's still a huge amount of people and a huge amount of time required.
38:57Once the stone is finished, its unique number is carved into its space and it is set aside for collection.
39:04John on site would have been working on this particular window and hood mould, this stone here, treasury four.
39:11About a week ago, we prepared a few stones for transport so that when it comes to fix it, it's ready for him.
39:17And stick him in there and then we'll get to that one where the tracery is.
39:21In a yard full of stones, the unique numbers carved by Emlyn's masons come into their own.
39:28This number tells us the location of the stone, the face on the building and the stone number.
39:33So this is North West Tower, West Face, tracery number four.
39:38This and the large block of tracery for the centre of the tower window are the final pieces John needs to put in place.
39:51John's worried that if he's not careful, he might damage the delicate tracery on the larger stone.
39:57I'm worried about these delicate arises here. It's quite fragile, but it's also heavy and bulky.
40:04When we have to lure six, it's too delicate to lift it like that.
40:10One of the biggest challenges of stonemasonry is actually delivering a stone like this to the location it needs to be fixed.
40:17To lift the stone without damaging it, John decides to use a tool called a Lewis.
40:25You just have to drill a hole.
40:26The idea is that as the weight comes on this ring here, it pulls sideways and it spreads the weight within the drill hole.
40:35And you can lift the stone. I think these are one-ton Lewis's.
40:40Lewis's have been used for centuries, but medieval Lewis holes were cut with just a hammer and chisel.
40:46John has to be careful while drilling because the carving of the tracery has cut deep into the stone and there's not much of a margin for him to make the hole.
40:58I'm trying to make sure I don't go too far with the drill bit.
41:01With the Lewis ready to take the weight, the team tries again.
41:07Be nice and gentle.
41:10Pretty good.
41:14OK? Yep.
41:16You have to be really careful.
41:18The stone can now be manhandled into the lift and up onto the tower.
41:22Now we've got it up here. Next thing will be to get it in the building.
41:32To fix the stones in place, John's using an old medieval mortar mix.
41:37So this is hotline mortar, so it's mixed with the lime.
41:42All of these buildings were built using hotline mixed mortar originally, but then the use of hotline fell away,
41:51particularly with the introduction of cement, because there's certain health and safety implications to mixing the mortar
41:56compared to a cement mortar.
41:59It reaches about 200 degrees as it mixes.
42:03So there's obviously, it's a little bit more difficult to use than sand and cement mortars,
42:09but it's got substantial benefits for the building.
42:12Because, unlike cement, lime mortar flexes with the building.
42:17The medieval builders really understood what they were doing.
42:20A soft lime mortar that allows water to move through it slightly more easily than through the stone.
42:29It will prolong its life and allow the building to settle and move.
42:34When you put cement into that location, it's much more rigid.
42:38And you can get shearing through stones where they've been put under so much pressure, they've actually given up the ghost before the cement.
42:49There is still work to be done, troweling in the joints and fixing the central tracery.
43:00But for now, the stone that John drew up for Emelyn's team to make is finally in position.
43:05And for John, it's moments like this that make the job worthwhile.
43:11I think for a stone mason, if you don't enjoy working on a cathedral, you're probably in the wrong job.
43:18To be up on top of the scaffold and get away from all of the stresses and strains going on down below, you can just come up and fix stones.
43:29You know, they're going to be in for hopefully another 200 years.
43:32So it's quite a nice feeling really.
43:36It's a feeling his boss, Tony, can relate to.
43:41All the stonemasons are passionate about what they do.
43:44They understand the building, they know the building, love the building.
43:47We feel a bit like caretakers looking after the cathedral.
43:50Hopefully we're putting it back to its former glory and the building will continue for generations to come.
44:02We'll see you next time.
44:32See you next time.
44:33We'll see you next time.
44:38Good night.
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