Friday 24 August 2012

New Building: Week 23 - New Doorway

“And the six hundred men stood before the door, appointed with their arms.”

—Judges 18:15–17

Well, not quite six hundred men, but there was some pretty hefty machinery around last week. (Apologies for the noise in church.) This is the new door from the first floor of the Parish centre (soon to be New Library) to the coretto, the old organ loft above the shrine of St Thérèse of Lisieux in church.

The coretto is currently accessed by climbing a spiral staircase in a very confined space — some of you will have noticed the doorway next to St Thérèse. We use the coretto for storage of things like crib figures and the booklets for Mass and Vespers. With a door from the new library, access will be even easier in future, and we will also be able to store larger items there. The spiral staircase, which is a very fine cast-iron piece, will be moved into the new library to give access to the gallery running around the edge of the room. The old door and partition surrounding it in the church can then be taken out, which will give us some space to do nice things to the shrine of St Thérèse.

Here you can see the architect's drawing of the library with the staircase in place.

And here you can see the doorway growing:

“And he brought me in to the door of the court: and I saw, and behold a hole in the wall. And he said to me: Son of man, dig in the wall. And when I had digged in the wall, behold a door.”

—Ezekiel 8:6–9

...and of course, finishing off with this week's view from the top of the building — of Boar's Hill!