We started on the north wall in February, expecting two weeks of work. By the end of March we were still there, scraping back layer after layer of distemper and gloss, finding the soft chalky lime underneath.
Behind a panel near the vestry door there was a pencilled name and a date - A. Hibbert, March 1924. Nobody we asked knew who he was. We left the name where it was and painted around it.
A building like this remembers things you don't expect it to. Brackets for lamps that have long since gone. The ghost of a noticeboard. A line of nails at exactly the height a coat hook would have been, fifty years ago.
We're not trying to restore the church to any particular moment in its life. We're just trying to make a building that works for the people in it now - and to leave enough of the old marks visible that the next lot can read them too.
