The restoration of the Lourdes Chapel:

For a number of years now St Dominic's fund raisers have set their sights on restoring our much loved Lourdeschapel. We'll never know how many hours and how much effort went into the weekly jumble sales and the Grand Christmas and Summer Fairs. Almost a decade passed before enough money was raised and the restorators were ready to move in. I'm sure many people wondered if it would ever happen. When I came in the Autumn of 1997 much of the sum was in the bank already but nothing had happened. I didn't know where to begin. Restoration of Victorian Chapels isn't on the curriculum at our training house in Oxford nor in any of the seminaries known to me. But with the permission and support of Fr Denis, the Prior, I began to investigate.

It took a while to get companies to come and then ages to get an estimate from them. Looking back I'm sure that first man who came was more interested in seeing the Church than in actually doing the job! But really I was getting nowhere, until Fr Malcolm, then Provincial, who makes no secret of the fact that his first love is St Dominic's and has always been a great support to anything I was doing in the parish, drew my attention to the fact that there was a diocesan surveyor who would help. Soon I had the Diocesan Directory open and was on the telephone to Chris Fanning. Here was someone who could advise what needed to be done and who would give me names and numbers of companies who could do the work. With his help the long process of getting companies to come and do quotations began. It took quite a while to decide exactly what way the restoration should be carried out and quite a while to actually get the quotations in.

Eventually, on 11th of February 2000, the Feast Of Our Lady of Lourdes, Chris wrote to me with all the estimates and a proposal. The overall cost was to be around £25,000, although in fact it's probably cost a bit more as there were a few hidden costs. It was late spring when the scaffolding came and the chapel was hidden from view behind a dust screen. Behind that screen, the chapel became a hive of activity. The first task was to replace plaster which had been damaged by a leaking roof. The plasterers had to strip away and replace a large triangular section on the top right-hand wall. Then we had to let the newly plastered section dry out. When the stone cleaners began work, the first surprise was the body beneath the altar. With the stone still wet from cleaning, the body beneath the altar looked for a while like a real corpse! But the great surprise was the delicate cream colour of the stone. Cleaning also revealed the beauty of the carving of Jesus and the beloved disciple at the last supper which sits in the lunette high above the altar. As the stone cleaning progressed on one side of the chapel, on the other side work began on the paint work. First it had to be cleaned. They did much of this work using cotton buds and strange smelling substances. This showed up that at some stage in the history of the chapel someone had put a transparent brown layer on, rather like cold tea, perhaps to make it look older. When all the remaining paint work had been cleaned, the whole surface was sealed so that in years to come it would still be preserved.

Meanwhile, stencils had to be taken from the surviving decoration so that the patterns could be replicated on the areas where there was nothing left. Then the real work began as the surviving work was touched up and the remaining areas painted from scratch. On close examination the paint work on the ceiling proved to be too far gone to restore so it was sealed and then repainted.

Gradually under the careful hands of the restorators what appeared a dull green was revealed to be a surface decorated in cream, blue, red and gold. It became clear that the artist, NHJ Westlake, took his colour scheme from the colour of the stone and from the stained glass window. It's almost as if by magic the colours of the window are projected onto the walls of the chapel. While all this was going on the stone cleaners had turned their attention to the Lourdes monument itself. As they worked it's beauty became visible once again. On the lower section of this monument and on the figure of the dead Christ beneath the altar the big problem was deposits of wax which had crystalised. This wax took a great amount of time and effort to remove.

Oliver Gill, a stonemason, came and touched up the faces of Our Lady and St Bernadette. Finally, cleaning and gilding of the grill revealed their beauty and intricacy. The last job was to restore the beautiful inscription which asks us to pray for the Belton Family, the chapel's original benefactors. This is a happy day for St Dominic's. The combined efforts of so many people have given us back the beauty of our Lourdes Chapel. In the years to come may it be a constant reminder to us of what we as a parish can do together.