New building: Week 10 - More bricks

...8000 more bricks in fact, in the last week.

Some work has been done on the foundations around the edge of the building:

And the ground floor ceiling in the Parish Centre has been removed to put in the steel bars that will take the weight of the library's 10,000 books.

New Building: Week 9 - Bricks

New Building: Week 8 - Floors and walls

Last week there were some important visitors to the site:

Here are the finished foundations.

Then some concrete beams arrived...

...which went on top of the foundations...

...to form a floor:

Here is another view of that gap where the stairs were. You can also see a glimpse of the first walls rising.

And of course, we wouldn't want to forget the drains.

New Building: Week 7 - A hole in the wall

The foundations of the new accommodation block are finished, and more bricks are arriving each day. The walls should start to materialise very soon.

Last week we showed you the gap where the stairs used to be. This week we can show the the gap where the wall next to them used to be.

...and here is where the wall has gone

...and, yes, that's the window that was in the wall.

Part of the new work is to straighten the wall out so that the stairs open directly into the outside world. This will give the fathers access to their bedrooms upstairs without having to go through the Parish centre.

A Cardinal Patron

We are very pleased to announce a new patron of our fundraising campaign: His Eminence, George Cardinal Pell, Archbishop of Sydney.

Cardinal Pell is a graduate of Oxford University. As part of his visit to the city in 2009, he celebrated Mass for the beatification of Blessed John Henry Newman in our church.

He writes:

“I have very many happy memories of the Catholic student community at Oxford from my own time there, and I am only too happy to endorse the appeal as a way of acknowledging the splendid tradition of the Oratorians at Oxford and the many blessings they have brought to Catholic life at the University. I am particularly pleased to see that the spirit of Blessed John Henry Newman continues to be preserved and transmitted at England's greatest university.”

New Building: Week 6 - Asbestos and Stairs

Here is a view of the finished foundations, complete with drains.

There was some asbestos left in the building that had to be taken out. In the papers that were cleared out of the Parish centre before the work started, we have just discovered the health and safety report that said the asbestos had to be put in!

The stairs of the Parish centre have been chopped off half way down at the bend in the staircase. The new staircase, which will lead to the accommodation, will go in a straight line, coming out to a new, separate doorway next to the entrance to the Parish centre.

Meanwhile, the temporary partition in the upper room has been taken down. It was previously a storage room for the overflow from the sacristy and library. This is where the librarian's office will be in the new library.

Campaign Total: £2,124,734.23

The total raised so far is:

£2,124,734.23	16/04/2012
£2,123,069.71	10/04/2012