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February 9, 2009
Tours I want to take, part 3,257
The triforium at Westminster Abbey! Read about it - they're really thinking of opening the upper galleries, if they can just think of where to put an elevator without ruining the building.
Believe me, having climbed into the triforia or galleries of a few Romanesque and Gothic churches you don't WANT to be using the tiny, tight, spiral staircase provided by the original builders if you can help it. I don't have a lot of claustrophobia or acrophobia issues, but going down one of those makes my heart pound faster than going up.
One solution could be a new glass lift, tucked into an angle of the outside wall, but the debate continues over how then to get visitors through the metre-thick wall, and the tangle of rafters where the roof slopes to meet the triangular stone windows. An exhibition of development proposals - including a proper cafe instead of the present tea-stall in the cloisters - is planned for next summer.Apart from buckets under leaks, stored scaffolding, Victorian heating pipes and ominous little piles of droppings, the Triforium holds treasures including stained glass windows invisible from the floor below, and a beautiful row of stone corbels - angels, monsters, and a dreamy man propped on one elbow - crisp as the day they were carved because they were never exposed to weather.
I wanna go!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at February 9, 2009 7:39 AM