Rood Returned

Mr Mahoney the glass restorer came back to Swanvale Halt yesterday to replace the damaged panels from the Rood Window. I greeted him, and went away to do other things - until anticipation, and the remembered warning from a parishioner, 'of course it's never as good as the original', got the better of me, and I headed back down the hill to see what was happening.

The repaired glass looks almost exactly the same as the old: there is one area which appears slightly cleaner, but that's it. It seems to my untrained eye to be a beautiful job. My relief could barely be described.

We would quite like to have guards installed over this particularly vulnerable window (as the green copper stains in the wall around show that it once had) but the price is eye-watering. Mr Mahoney says he might be able to come up with a less painful quote. Not far away is another church that recently suffered some vandalism and launched a Justgiving campaign to help with the repairs, and ended up raising enough to pay for a new CCTV system and exterior lighting as well. Apparently the incumbent was kicking himself for setting a £5K limit to the sum. I'm not sure Swanvale Halt can come up with that, but we could have a go!