Thundridge Old Church has a door! On 28th August a group from TOCAG, the Diocese and Thomas Ford architects observed Prestigious Masonry Services as they removed the old blocking from the West doorway and we got a look inside the tower for the first time in many years. In the span of ten hours, they cleared the doorway arch and installed a new custom-fit steel door with a lock. This door will have a motion-activated camera watching over it.
The new door is exciting for many reasons. One, we will now be able to access the tower for structural investigation, as well as repair and maintenance. And once the tower is repaired and safe (there is currently a risk of falling masonry and stone), the door will enable public access to the tower interior and bring it back into limited use.
As you can see from the photos, behind the concrete wall that blocked the doorway arch was a shoulder-height pile of rubble consisting of bricks, stones, and broken gravestone pieces. This had been piled into the tower in 2015 by the Diocese in an effort to remove materials from the graveyard that were being used for vandalism, and to shore up the concrete blocking the arch. It all had to be removed for the door installation, and in that pile of rubble were some treasures! We’ll talk about that next time…
