In the 1860s a younger architect arrives in a small city in southern England. He has been despatched to renovate the city’s nice church, a splendid medieval constructing which has fallen into disrepair. The roof is leaking, the material is mouldering and because the ground decays the native physician worries an infection will unfold from the graves beneath the church; the useless, he fears, will start to poison the dwelling.
However the architect realises directly that the church’s issues run deeper than this. Its large tower is simply too heavy for the constructing. It has been slowly shifting for hundreds of years and he appears to listen to the voices of its arches crying out: ‘They’ve certain on us a burden too heavy to be borne. We’re shifting it. The arch by no means sleeps.’ Nobody heeds his warnings; collapse is just a matter of time.
