For many years the North Wing of Combermere Abbey has been a very sad sight; held up by scaffolding and shrouded in a wind-torn green fabric to catch falling masonry. Over the last decade and a half the scaffolding has rotted away (from the inside of the tubes, not the galvanised outer edges), and the knuckle joints and bolts have welded themselves together in rusty blobs. This is how it looked:
Now, with full restoration imminent, the scaffolding has been dismantled and, despite being in a perilous condition, it’s great to be able to at least see the structure of the wing once more
If you look closely at the middle one of those three pictures you will see two triple ranges of small ecclesiastical windows high up on the south-facing return (one range is partly hidden by the green steelwork). I have certainly never seen those before, and I can’t tell you which room (if any) they open into. When I have found out I will certainly let you know.