And Then It Was Gone

In the Balintore Castle laundry, there was a "copper" - this is a large copper bowl, situated above a coal fire, in which the clothes and sheets are boiled. When I first saw the castle, the copper had disappeared and the brick structure holding the vessel, had half collapsed with the remainder being extremely unstable.

Today, my roofer Andy and myself undertook to remove the final remnants of the brick structure - some friends had removed a large chunk the day before - but I stopped further progress because the flue above the boiler looked set to collapse and I didn't want my friends to be in any danger. I was hoping that the flue built into the wall would support its own weight, whether the boiler was there or not ...

Anyhow, I took a picture of the scene, left with a barrow of rubble - but stopped in my tracks and rushed back when I heard a noise like an earthquake accompanied by a "Whoa!" from my roofer. My roofer had removed one brick from the top of the flue, and the whole structure had detached from the wall cleanly in a one-er - looking, apparently, like the collapsing twin towers.

BEFORE

AFTER

Thankfully my roofer was on the top of a ladder and I was out the room - the flue was obviously NOT built into the wall and would have had to be removed in any case for safety. The after photo is 12:43 - little did I know at 12:40 when the before photo was taken that the transition would be so immediate. It was only a few seconds. the delay of 3 minutes is largely me regaining my composure.

Blogging this from a friend's house :-) still no InterNet at the castle. :-(