The removal of the rubble that was in the Old Thundridge Church tower was a huge task that was only made possible through the combined efforts of so many people, including those who just happened to be passing and joined in to help. It is estimated that around six tonnes of material came out of the tower and every part of that was loosened, lifted, carried, shovelled, crated, barrowed, sorted, sieved, cleaned and bagged – sometimes multiple times – by hand. It was an amazing multi-day effort by the community and truly shows how loved the tower and the special space it occupies is.
Because the tower is a listed building and the churchyard and moated enclosure are a scheduled monument, TOCAG had to get approval from the Secretary of State and Historic England for the rubble removal and processing, and this was conditioned on having a full archaeological assessment and formal report of everything inside the tower. The sorting of the material was supervised by a professional archaeologist.
The work began once the door was installed and the first task was the dirtiest – removing the few feet of dust, pigeon mess, broken glass, and plastic rubbish from inside. The next week, on the 6th and 7th of Sept, a team of volunteers armed with pickaxes, shovels, sieves, and wheelbarrows attacked the huge pile of rubble and began moving it into the churchyard. There, it was sorted into piles by type. Once sorted, the bricks were stacked neatly inside the tower – they can be reused in restoration in the churchyard, along with stones, and the gravestones were relocated offsite for another soon-to-be-announced project.
The majority of bricks were more recent, from the late 18th-early 19th century – these were a deep red color with straight edges. A smaller number were Tudor era bricks and these were longer, thinner, and flatter with more rounded edges and corners – these perhaps were from a wall that separated the old Tudor manor house Thundridge Bury (demolished 1811) from the churchyard.
Next post… What do you think we found UNDER all that rubble in the tower?
