Of Cooling Towers and Churches and Trees

Synchronicity – On some days everything just wants to get connected.

Today I went to the village of Ferrybridge to take photographs ready for a silk painting workshop next week.

Whilst there I couldn’t resist having a good look at Ferrybridge Power Station. In fact it’s very hard to look at Ferrybridge and not.

Recently I have been reading up on an incident in 1965 when 3 of the cooling towers blew down. A previous post went into it in a bit more detail.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wanted to see how close I could get to the cooling towers to photograph them. A few seconds after taking this I fell over backwards….one of the hazards of looking up.

Across the road from the Power Station is St Andrews Church.

 

 

 

 

 

The following information is from www.knottingley.org

“Dedicated to St. Andrew, the church originates from Norman times having been first built in approximately 1030.  Located on Pontefract Road, Ferrybridge, its current position belies the fact that the Church was rebuilt there, stone by stone, in the early 1950’s..  Its original location was at a distance from the residential area of the village and standing close to a marsh where willows for basket making were grown it would suffer from frequent flooding during the winter months making it unusable.  An inscription in the porch records that on November 17, 1866, water rose to a level of three feet within the church.

In 1350, the Church was rebuilt leaving only the porch and a few feet of wall on either side of it as a reminder of the original construction.  The year 1879 saw some extensive alterations to the Church which unfortunately obliterated most of the remains of the Norman and early English sections but there still remains much to interest the visitor.

During the Church’s relocation in the early 1950’s it was remodeled with the porch being moved to the opposite side, a feature which is clearly visible in the two photographs below.  It was traditional for Churches to be constructed with the longest walls orientated east to west, with the altar facing towards the east, though not all Churches followed this design. In order to provide access out onto the main road from the front of the building, the reconstruction of the Church  resulted in the porch having to be relocated on the opposite wall.

The original location of the church together with its current location can be seen clearly on the accompanying map.”

This rather wonderful bit of engineering took place to stop the church from falling down.

Oh…and in the grounds of the church is this tree that I’ve christened ‘Stumpy’…..

……..I was told by the Church Warden that the rest of it had blown down.

Some days……either that or Ferrybridge is built on jelly.