Conservation & Heritage Issue 50 Winter 2025/Spring 2026 - Flipbook - Page 38
outlook that far precedes my appointment. The recently
concluded ‘Canterbury Journey’ project is arguably the third
phase of bold, visionary and progressive investment over the
last 40 years that intrinsically links kindness towards the
building’s fabric with achieving the widest possible audience.
In 1992, Purcell was at the heart of a retrofit programme
that included installing underfloor heating to Henry Yevele’s
celebrated Perpendicular Gothic Nave, completed in 1405
(almost unheard of in Grade-I listed buildings at the time). A
flexible, well-maintained and welcoming worshipping space
was recognised as essential to supporting broader engagement
and representation, both locally and across the cathedral’s
wider faith and worldwide pilgrimage communities.
The transience of ‘England in stone’
Canterbury Cathedral is both our architectural and spiritual
peak, yet since the ridding of that ‘turbulent priest’ in 1170,
both the cathedral’s structural and spiritual evolution has
often been incongruous to the character of its architecture,
with each generation from Beckett, through the Reformation
and even today leaving an indelible mark.
The fundamental responsibility of an appointed Surveyor is
to keep the precious but demanding fabric maintained for
posterity; continuing to tell the story of the journey of faith
in this time for our successors. How this differs at Canterbury
is through a transcendence of purpose; solidifying those
porous stones into a perennial blank canvas upon which
the cathedral can project its vision of inspiring life in all its
fullness.
These communities were at the core of the second phase of
the UNESCO World Heritage Site’s diversification, as the
opening up of the precinct gave rise to a series of transient
projects aimed at supporting the cathedral’s many tenants
and neighbours through the care, repair and development
of listed buildings, landscape gardens and scheduled ancient
monuments. Notable among these was the construction of
William Whitfield’s International Study Centre (now the
Cathedral Lodge, Education and Conference Centre), the
complete refurbishment of the Grade I-listed Choir House
and Grade II*-listed Old Palace, the installation of a new lift
in the Treasury Yard, and the overhaul of the archive and
cathedral libraries to better protect and make accessible their
valuable written collections.
So, what began as forecasting and overseeing planned
preventative maintenance has seen the scope of fabric
interventions develop into the implementation of
transformative conservation and development works
with a more holistic purpose. The culminating effect of
conservation done carefully and correctly is an environment
that is as representative as possible, and in this case is as
open as possible, to the diverse routes people take to faith.
The most recent phase, known as the ‘Canterbury Journey’,
supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF),
has coincided with many significant Beckett milestones - 900
years since his birth, 850 years since his martyrdom in the
North-west Transept, and 800 years since his remains were
translated to the Trinity Chapel - in addition to notable First
World War commemorations in 2018 and the forthcoming
installation of the first female Archbishop of Canterbury
in March 2026. What transpired has consequently been as
much a research undertaking as a conservation one, with two
distinct disciplines interweaving to achieve this enduring
shared purpose of opening routes to faith through diversified
representation and education.
Community, crafts and coherence
Restoration works to the Becket Miracle Window epitomised
this complementary approach. Necessary interventions to
correct corrosion and improve the environmental conditions
around the stained glass provided an opportunity to review
the order their depictions, with the arrangement from their
last significant restoration in 1946 called into question
following extension historic research by stained glass experts
Leonie Seliger and Rachel Koopmans. Not only were some
fragments previously thought to be the work of Victorian
restorers in fact from the late 12th century, but some panels
from their 1850s and 1940s restorations were impeding the
visual access and legibility of the windows and the story of
Becket’s life they were portraying.
In addition to its spiritual learning commitments, the
cathedral is also an institution of dynamic education, seen
most evidently through a small but mighty in-house crafts
and conservation team. Alongside these masters of their
trades, our local Purcell team has been privileged to deliver
award-winning work to many areas of the cathedral’s fabric.
We have benefitted from a principled client body with great
awareness of the legacy of their buildings and the meanings
each and every one of us personally attach to the fabric. The
‘why’ of conservation, restoration and renewal in a place of
worship has great propensity to foster conversation between
traditional skills, learned and craft alike, and our twenty-first
century lives.
There is no measure by which this task was not painstaking.
With unavoidable disturbances to the lead matrix, the
addition of new protective glazing and a new perimeter
Investing in and retaining skills pertinent to the cathedral’s
preservation is facet of Canterbury’s posterity-focused
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