In those inaccessible attics of public buildings, you will often find the markings of those who have cared for that place before you. Etched into stone or carved onto wood, one wonders what particular role that specific person played so that you could stand there today.
Sam Price, along with Architect and friend Ian Stewart of Carden & Godfrey, has cared for Beverley Minster since the mid-1980s. During this time, Sam and Ian undertook a myriad of projects, from the fundamental to the delightful, including stabilising the foundations, setting up a carbon-fibre movement monitoring system in the roof, and installing a finely balanced counterweight system that allows the vicar to raise and lower the hefty font cover with a single finger.
For all this work, the Master Craftsman for the Minster has been the wonderful Steve Rial. Always positive and with a glint in his eye, Steve oversaw - or carried out - every project at the Minster for 33 years. It would be Steve who was up on the roofs repairing a leak on a cold and blustery Yorkshire February morning, but it would also be Steve who greeted you warmly, in his perennial blue overalls and with an easy anecdote.
Steve retired in 2022. But not before he had left a little parting gift for Sam and Ian. While replacing two of the lead downpipes high up on the Great North Transept, Steve added lead plaques for S Price and I Stewart to the tops of these pipes. A fittingly understated little nod from the Master Craftsman to his colleagues in the care of the Minster.
And so Sam and Ian’s names take their metaphorical and physical places among those who have come before them, as custodians of this spectacular church. We hope that future generations will look up and see those names, and wonder how S Price and I Stewart played their parts in the preservation of Beverley Minster.
Image by Steve Rial
