SCAFFOLDING is due to be removed from Salisbury Cathedral after a "marathon" 37-year circuit of restoration and repair. 

In less than two weeks’ time, Canon Kenneth Padley, Canon Treasurer of Salisbury Cathedral will climb to the top of the scaffold on the East End of the Cathedral to bless the cross that sits high above the Trinity Chapel.

Called ‘Topping Out’, Canon Kenneth’s blessing on Thursday, September 7 will mark a significant milestone in an extraordinary feat of restoration and repair, which began with a survey by the then Clerk of Works, Roy Spring, in 1986.

In his survey, Spring noted that the stonework was in a dangerous condition and major work was required.

Restoration work eventually got underway after a huge fundraising appeal in the mid to late 1980s, and the stonemasonry, glazing and maintenance team have since been working their way round the building, a 37-year marathon that has taken almost as long as it took to build the main Cathedral in the 13th century.

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Once the Topping Out blessing has taken place, the scaffold will be removed, a process that will take around six weeks, and the rooftops and parapets that are currently accessible will fall back, as will the delicate carvings done by the Cathedral masons and the ‘secret’ glazing workshop built to facilitate the re-leading of the Cathedral windows and the installation of the Moses window in 1781.

Just as the masons uncovered evidence of their forebears in the form of oyster shells, eaten for lunch and used to pack spaces between stones, so future masons carrying out restoration work centuries from now will discover quirky stone carvings of, for example, a ferret, a baby dragon, a bird on a nest, a gecko, a sunflower and even the figure of a female mason carved by Carol Pike, who has worked for the Cathedral for 17 years and was married in the Cathedral Quire.

Among the new stones fixed on the East End there are also commemorative stones recalling historic events or people - King Charles’ stone, unveiled when he was the Prince of Wales to mark the 800th anniversary of the Cathedral’s foundation, the Spitfire Stone that recalls the wartime work of the so-called ‘secret spitfire’ builders, and a stone celebrating the then Dean’s daughter running (and completing) the London marathon to raise funds for the Cathedral restoration.

Gary Price, Clerk of Works said: “It has been a great honour and a privilege to have been able to work on this incredible building since the start of our modern repair programme, and by mid-November all traces of the scaffolding that has made its way around the building for the last 37 years will be gone and the Cathedral will stand in glory as it did in the 14th century after Spire was added.”

Meanwhile the Cathedral stonemasons cannot afford to rest on their laurels. They have moved on to the North Cloisters (work that will take about four years to complete), where they are restoring the elaborately carved tracery and Purbeck columns.