READS THE
KEY SPIRE
Facing page, above. Medieval church builders at work. How much ofWilliam Golding’s fictionalised version of their methods was accurate? Facing page, below. Timber framing used in the construction of Salisbury’s spire, still in place
This page, top. The spire has dominated city and landscape for seven centuries. Here pictured in the late 18th century; bottom left, as engraved by Hollar in the mid 17th century; bottom right, the spire’s shadow reaches across the cathedral close
background to a working life. Nomatter, we remember what we choose to remember. The next time,my reading was that the novel
seemed to be about obsession and repression and madness – how could I have thought it was about building a spire at all? By this time, I already knew a littlemore about building conservation, and I certainly knew enough to be thoroughly confused by some of the descriptions of building technology.
IN A 1980 television interview with Melvyn Bragg , Golding said that he had not actually carried out much factual research onmedieval spire building for “The Spire”. Instead, he thought about his naval experience: “I askedmyself what the builders would have done if they had been sailors.” And he went on to say: “People seemto believe it.” Followers of that old red herring about the re-use of ships’ timbers in medieval domestic timber-framed buildings will
probably love that confusion, but I accept this itself is probably a red herring. There are technical parts of the story which are not only difficult to understand, they are unlikely. There is a sequence, near the end of the novel, in which Jocelin describes how the narrowing of the central opening of the spire with each successive octagon of stonemeans the huge stone that is to cap the spire is too big to be raised through it. Before the opening reaches this point, the central scaffold, until now apparently only inside the spire, is extended sideways, so outside the spire, and the huge capstone, weighing “more than a horse and cart”, is brought up and stored here. “After that, the next course of the cone took the scaffolding and the stone up with them. Now the scaffolding would be removed frombelow.” Well, thismay be how sailors do things, but I
worry about eccentric loading. Perhaps this ismy own obsessive worry, yet at this stage it is hard not to
conclude, if one has not already done so, that Jocelin has gonemad – what he tells us can’t all be true. But inmymost recent reading, and perhaps with
a littlemore experience of spires, I find that I am muchmore persuaded by the idea that those who build spires, both those who commission themand those who actually construct them, are compulsive characters, whosemotivation certainly comes close tomadness, and whose ideas are not always connected with Christian virtue. So perhaps this really is a story about building a
spire, though not in the way I had hoped.Whilst I can understand that the narrative focus of Jocelin precludesmore insights into spire construction, I still wish there wasmore about limemortars – but then this is the case with nearly every novel that deals with traditional building.
David Heath is SPAB Chairman Cornerstone, Vol 32, No 3 2011 99
LAURENCEWEEDY BRIDGEMAN
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