A bit of a height

The photos, all of which were taken by Stewart D MacFarlane (thanks for sharing them with me Stewart) were taken at the topping-out ceremony of the spire of St Mary's Cathedral in Glasgow on December 19th 1989 during the restoration.

I'm going to break one of my own rules here and refer to people by their names rather than just initials, since I'm not Blogging about what anyone has been doing recently.

In the top image the then Bishop of Glasgow & Galloway, Derek Rawcliffe, is pictured with a young looking (and she hasn't changed much) Rona from the choir. In the second one down from L-R there is Douglas Goodson in the light grey jacket (although you can't see his face), me, Gwyneth Leech, Lindsay Pell, Gail Phillips, Rona MacLeod, Liz Morrell, and David Wilson. Unfortunately I can't make out who are under the two white hats which can be seen in the background, but looking through Stewart's other images I can see that George Farrow, Thom Irvine and Leslie MacLeod were also up there, as well as of course The Rev Malcolm E Grant, Provost at that time, and Stewart who took the photos.

We all climbed up the scaffolding and during the short service to rededicate the cross we sang Ding Dong Merrily on High. What a view! And what an experience!

If you click on the lowest image to see a larger version you can just see a red sweat-shirted and white hard-hatted person right at the top. It'll give you an idea of scale! It isn't the biggest Cathedral in the world, and isn't the tallest spire, but it's a bloody long way to climb!

And the top image in my previous post was taken by me half way up (or down) the spire.