Major renovations underway in Salisbury Cathedral Cloisters
The makeover's expected to take five years
A major renovation project of Salisbury Cathedral's cloisters has got underway.
The work, which is expected to last around five years, comes after almost 40 years of work to the external sections of the building were completed in September 2023.
Clerk of Works at the Cathedral, Gary Price, told Greatest Hits Radio what work is being done:
"We've got 9 bays of the north cloisters and we're currently working on three of those.
"We are replacing some stone work, undertaking mortar repairs that the Victorian's undertook in the 1860s that have failed because they've been in there for some time.
"We're also installing new purbeck columns, capitals and bases," Mr Price said.
The first three bays are expected to be completed after about a year, before moving onto the next three in turn.
Mr Price told us that the team carrying out the work will be conserving as much of the original material as possible, but there will be some that can't be retained.
He explained that's mostly down to structural reasons and health and safety reasons.
"We don't want things, pieces of stone falling off. So if it's structurally sound, we'll keep it, if not, then we generally try and replace it," he said.
Once the work is eventually completed, Mr Price said the Cathedral will look a lot smarter than before.
"We're replacing a lot of the purbeck columns so they will look all new and shinily polished and as it's part of the main visitor entrance walkway into the refectory, people will certainly notice the difference," he said.
While the work is being completed, the scaffolding has been covered with pictures of the team working on the cloisters, with a few words about them.
This was done to make the team more personable.
Mr Price said: "They've kind of become minor celebrities at the moment, as the visitors see them walking in and out of the cloisters, they they ask to have photos taken with them now because they can see them on the hoarding."