Nottingham Cathedral

• Restoring Pugin Project Update •

✝️ For the first time in nearly forty years, Pugin’s great Cross is being moved.

High on the sanctuary, it has watched over us for decades: out of reach, and rarely seen up close. ✨

As part of our Restoring Pugin project, scaffolding has gone up, and our conservators have come face to face with it: carefully lowering it, and inspecting it more closely than anyone has in a generation.

⬇️ Swipe to see what nearly forty years leaves behind.

The soot of countless candles. The breath of every prayer. The dust of the city, settled into every fold and gilded leaf. Not damage, but a record. A century and a half of devotion, written in grime most of us would never get to see.

Where we can, we hope to give it a gentle clean in situ, though the heart of this work is simpler: returning the Cross to its rightful place.

There is something quite moving in it: the figure of Christ, lowered from on high and tended by careful hands. IYKYK. 🙏

Soon the Cross will return to its original height, where it originally sat on Pugin’s Rood Screen.

We’ll keep you posted every step of the way.

Nottingham Cathedral: all welcome, always.

📸 Restoring Pugin at Nottingham Cathedral, with

[ 🏷️ Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, East Midlands, Catholic Church, Catholicism, Nottingham Cathedral, AWN Pugin, Restoring Pugin, heritage treasures ]