St Comghan's Update

Many, many thanks to these three gentlemen who, busy as they were, gave an hour of their time yesterday to come up to St Comghan's church to give the community some advice on the problem of the cracked stone lintel over the only doorway.  We could hardly ask for better friends: from left, they are Francis Shaw, an architect from Shaw & Jagger who specialises in the renovation of old buildings and whom many will remember from the Grand Design's programme when he renovated Peel Castle, John-Paul Ashley of Ashley Thompson, the builders who worked with Francis on Peel Castle, and Brian Smith, technical director at Arc Engineers, who is a structural engineer. All are currently involved in the restoration of Mingary Castle.

They will come back to us with more detail, but their feeling was that the lintel, while cracked in two places, isn't a serious hazard and could be strengthened relatively easily.  On the other hand, they were much more concerned about the three stone arches over the windows, which desperately need some work before they collapse.