John Thomas, author of The New Cathedral, writes in chapter four, Destruction and Dilemma of the Night, a pathfinder unit of the German Air Force dropped incendiary canisters on St. Michael’s cathedral, Coventry.
Step-by-step, John Thomas describes the men trying to save the building: “the bomb had melted the lead and set the oak ceiling ablaze. Lead was hacked away, sand poured down the hole and water pumped up from beneath; it was extinguished.”
It got worse, much worse, for the cathedral of St. Michael’s and the entire city.
I write to you about Coventry some 80 years ago because of the similarity in the anguish of a loved building. The decisions which had to be made post-war, how to choose an architect and so on. Good came out of evil. A superb Chapel of Unity resulted.
Helen Moore
Penticton