As part of the annual College of Canons meeting, we were taken up to the work being done above the North Transept from which we got this view looking back down at the Cloisters (left) and Chapter House (right). The weighed-down board at the bottom of the picture is presumably protecting a skylight in what is the newish toilet block, and the cunningly concealed floodlights are visible from this angle a little above that.
This is the main roof work which is going on. The roof on the left has copper ties waiting for the lead to be laid there (as it has already been on the right). Whole sections of the organ are housed immediately beneath this roof, so this piece of work is particularly challenging. One of the members of the Cathedral Works Department was explaining how different it is to judge and execute every different installation rather than do the simple calculations and straight-line drawings classroom-based training assumed would do the job: I suggested he be invited to preach at the next Ordination.
This is how to restore a flying buttress (there is new stone at the far left end of it): the metal girder is the crucial thing; without it the buttress would collapse when one stone is removed and it wouldn't be possible to put it back together again.
And I real bonus for me was getting this near to a window in the Sailors' Chapel which I normally have to strain my neck to look up to so that I can see the Grimsby Dock Tower pictured in it (it is there at the top right of the photograph).
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