Wildlife Notes
We were kept awake on the Estate a few nights ago by a very loud and determined fox, evidently walking up and down between my house and the flats. There seemed to be another fox, somewhere distant, answering. It's very hard to describe the noise, but once you've heard it you recognise it. This time it was exceptionally loud. I eventually got out of bed, and from a front window watched the fox come out in front of the church and saunter away up the road, presumably in the direction of the other fox. One of my callers (from Golborne Road) remarked that she had been kept awake by what she was told were foxes, "Sounded like a baby!" she said, "Why do they do it then? Are they talking to other foxes?" I replied that I believe their intention is to meet up with other foxes. "Why's that then? I thought they didn't like other foxes!" I explained that I believe they want to get to know each other better. "Ooohh, yeah."
This is a real St Luke's Summer, for which God be thanked! In the late afternoon sun one day last week I was able to watch a lesser-spotted woodpecker on a rather weedy tree, and then on the wall of the flats behind me, which was a pleasant surprise.
The Ascension of Our Lord
Some of you will remember the War Memorial Calvary ("What have you done with Jesus?") and its structural problems that required it to be taken down three years ago (having been held up by scaffolding for more than fifteen years). The plan had been to restore it quickly as a visible sign of our intent for the whole church, but of course it didn't work that way. In fact that was just as well, because when we came to scaffold the outside of the church the whole of the sunken area over which the Calvary stood was filled with scaffolding, and the wooden cross had to be carefully placed against a wall. The cleaning of the exterior brick and stonework also produced a huge amount of dirty run-off, and it became obvious that if the Calvary had been re-erected in its place it would have got absolutely filthy. So, the fact that the (cast-iron) corpus was waiting in a forge somewhere in Sussex was a good thing.
The exterior scaffolding came down some time ago, and the specialist contractors began the process of reconstruction. Meanwhile, the corpus was restored to his original state. Martin Travers (who designed the Calvary in the 1920s) never stinted on bling if he got the chance, and so our cast-iron corpus was gilded. Now, Travers was more of a designer than an architect, which is perhaps why he had fixed the wooden cross onto a cast-iron beam. It was the rusting and subsequent distortion of this beam that had caused all the problems. So our contractors had to cast a nice new concrete beam, in situ, as the new base, which meant that lots of brickwork had to be taken down, making it quite a task. Then the old stone plinth had to be restored and re-erected, and then the wooden cross was oiled and put in place (which involved more scaffolding and a block and tackle).
Finally, last Friday, the corpus returned, in the back of a van. The gilder came with him, in case of touching up, and there were the men from the forge, and the contractors, and a man with a lorry with a hoist. They had the unenviable task of moving an extremely heavy cast-iron figure that was now covered in very delicate gold leaf and hoisting him up onto a cross about fifteen feet off the ground. Matters were not made easier by three cars ignoring our parking suspension; the contractors told me that one had actually been parked there while they were there, and the driver had just shrugged when told the bay was suspended. The result was that the hoist couldn't get very close, and they decided not to lift the corpus over the cars. Instead they carried him round in a circle, rising to a considerable height to get him round behind a streetlamp. Frankly, I held my breath. All was accomplished beautifully (though not without acute anxiety for the watching Vicar). They fixed his hands in place, but then came an alarming moment when the cross-beam flexed, and indeed the whole cross moved, which worried the contractors sufficiently for them to call the architect. They were reassured, and when his feet were fixed the whole structure became rock-solid. So now, for the first time in decades, the gilded figure of Christ presides over Rowington Close. Best of all, the job has been done in time for the centenary of the end of the Great War.
Back Home
We returned to worship in the main body of the church this weekend. Our Sunday Mass was exactly 150 years after Fr West celebrated the first Mass in the newly-built chancel, and 145 years after the building was consecrated by Bishop Jackson. It's not all finished, with three significant bits of repair work still to be done, and the lights not sorted out properly, but at least we are back, and you can see the brilliant ceilings. It was a deep joy to celebrate the Dedication Festival, and (I hope) to do it as Fr West would have wanted. We had a decent crowd, and a nice party afterwards, and people's joy and relief was palpable. The next thing is to get the new extension finished, so that the parishioners who have waited so long for level access and lavatories can finally come back as well.
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