Town Church picking up the pieces

The church lost a number of tiles and had water pouring in through a window, as high winds and driving rain battered the east coast.

The fire service was called out to remove some of the loose tiles as it was feared they could fall on shoppers passing through Church Square.

The Rev. Penny Graysmith has lived in the island for over seven years and said the storm was the worst she had experienced since then. For her, it was worse than the 70mph winds of Storm Ciaran that hit the island just over a year ago.

‘It was because of the direction of the wind,’ she said.

‘I don’t think anyone was ready for how bad the weather was going to be.’

Guernsey’s prevailing south-westerly wind means St Peter Port is usually sheltered from the worst of the weather, but Thursday’s storm came from almost the opposite direction. This caused ‘bucketfuls’ of water to pour in through one of five windows on the eastern, sea-facing side of the protected building, which faced the worst of the driving rain.

‘We came to set up for a service and found the floor under the altar covered in water,’ she said.

‘Water was coming in right at the top of the window and coming down behind the wooden facade on the wall. Our church warden has been here a lot longer than me and she said that she had never known water to come into the building like that.’

The 25ft-high window affected was installed during the 1950s to celebrate the Liberation.

The church re-points one window every year in a rolling ongoing maintenance programme.

‘Unfortunately that was the only one that had not been done,’ Mrs Graysmith said.

‘It was such a freak weather event hopefully it won’t happen again before its restored,’ she said.

'It shows just how important the ongoing programme of restoration is, this is a precious historic building that we need to take care of.’

Mrs Graysmith said she wanted to say a big thank you to the fire service for coming out to help the church in winds that were gusting at almost 60mph.

‘It was critical that they came out and caught the tiles that were about to fall,’ she said.

‘Also a big thank you to our architect Stuart Pearce, who was straight down here to work out how the water was getting in.’