The parish church at Pontesbury is gradually getting back its old appearance after six months of painstaking work to repair the ravages of time.
The tower of St George’s Church is slowly starting to emerge again from behind the 12 levels of scaffolding and green mesh netting which have shrouded the village landmark during the £200,000 project.
And it is hoped that everything will be completed before Christmas.
Dating back to around 1250, the church was largely rebuilt and restored in the early 1800s after its tower collapsed. Water has been getting into the roof and walls in recent years, eating away the fabric of the building, partly due to the wrong mix of mortar being used for repairs in the 1930s.
The current work on the church is being carried out by specialist contractors Croft Building and Conservation Ltd, of Cannock. English Heritage handed over a £105,000 grant, while the remainder of the money came from church reserves, local fundraising and other grants including sums from the National Churches Trust, Shropshire Historic Churches Trust and Pontesbury Parish Council.
Stephen Winwood, secretary of the parochial church council, invited the Chronicle for an exclusive, close-up look at the progress of the scheme.
Photographer Iain Thomson was able to take pictures of the work in progress and bird’s eye panoramas from the top of the tower, illustrating Pontesbury’s surperb setting in the Shropshire hills. Mr Winwood said: “The work that was urgent 25 years ago is now crucially urgent and it was absolutely vital that we embarked on it. This is a major project which should be good for another 100 years.
Badly damaged
“One of the main jobs has been raking out the old mortar, repointing and replacing badly damaged stones.
“Experts first abseiled down the tower and took a video to ascertain exactly how bad it was.
“We have also had the two aisles re-roofed at the same time as a lot of the tiles had cracked and slipped.”
The project has included replacing old lead gutters with stainless steel ones, rebuilding the tower parapet stone by stone, restoring the clock and replacing and re-inserting crumbling stone louvres next to the bells.
And ‘George’ the weathercock has been regilded and is back on his perch on top of the tower.
Mr Winwood said: “We originally had early November down as the completion date but then we discovered more pointing needed doing. We are now talking about mid-December before everything is done and we hope to have the scaffolding down before Christmas.”
Mr Winwood said he wanted to thank the contractors for their helpfulness and also churchgoers for putting up with the inconvenience of the work.
Meanwhile, St George’s Church is now gearing up for one of its biggest events of the year – the annual festival of Trees and Cribs. Local groups, businesses, families and individuals are busy preparing their exhibits which will be on display from December 10 to 13.
By Peter Johnson
• For more images view the picture gallery here