Historic Churches 2022

BCD SPECIAL REPORT ON HISTORIC CHURCHES 29TH ANNUAL EDITION 17 levels of gentle uplighting to the lower elevations of the building, additional floodlighting to the clerestories and further highlighting of the three great towers, in a soft, warm-white colour. The three towers can now be transformed with colours selected from an infinite palette when required. Since its installation the system has been used to celebrate New Year’s Eve with spectacular animated sequences and to enhance our national occasions, celebrating the Platinum Jubilee in red, white and blue. It has also been used to support clapping for carers, charity events, and even the local football team. The many different lighting configurations have been proudly publicised by local and national press as well as on social media. More recently, like many other public buildings, the cathedral has been lit with the colours of the Ukrainian flag. Two important questions arise here: firstly, who makes the decision on whether a special light show is merited? Care has been taken to establish a management plan for illumination options. There is clearly a delicate balance to be achieved between what are necessary and appropriate light shows, and those requests which are less significant and more often declined. The second question is one of energy costs and sustainability – how do we balance this desire for decoration and celebration with today’s drive towards net zero carbon? Surely this makes such illumination an expensive and unsustainable folly. Lincoln’s scheme of the 1970s was indeed an energy hungry system with no allowance for dimming, attenuation or scene setting. However, the replacement one is carefully programmed to provide the right amount of light and only when required. Typically, it runs at 10 to 20 per cent of the previous loadings for a ‘full illumination’. In addition, the uplighting of the lower elevations has eliminated a number of dark and less attractive areas around the cathedral, boosting footfall and visual comfort around the area at night. Not only are the energy savings significant in themselves, with the more modern optics available in light fittings today, it is possible to dramatically reduce the amount of light pollution which previously resulted in an orange glow above the city. Some 80 miles south of Lincoln, Ely Cathedral has also recently had a new external lighting scheme commissioned. The need for new lighting arose in part from the need to install a new walkway around the famous Octagon so that the popular rooftop tours Two representations of the Ukrainian flag on Ely’s Octagon. Each of its eight faces are lit by two fittings which separately light the upper and lower parts of the elevation, allowing them to be used to display various combinations of yellow and blue. Graphic showing the various locations and coverage of groups of fittings at Lincoln Cathedral (Image: Light Perceptions) could continue in a safer manner. The positioning of the walkway made the old floodlight positions unviable, so a new scheme was commissioned. Whereas Lincoln Cathedral sits some 60 metres above sea level, Ely Cathedral, affectionately known as the ‘The Ship of the Fens’ due to its prominent position above the surrounding flat Cambridgeshire landscape, sits on a far lower mound of only 20 metres above the surrounding area. The Octagon, long seen as the landmark symbol of the cathedral, is the only part of the exterior that has been floodlit. Nonetheless it has, for some years, been used for coloured light shows by adding sheets of theatrical lighting ‘gel’ to the front of the normally white floodlights. As the Cathedral needed a new system, the Chapter (the governing body of the Cathedral) supported by the Friends of Ely Cathedral invested in a system that would offer a conventional white floodlighting as the norm, with the option of additional colour changing when required. When Cathedral representatives were taken three miles south of the city to view a mock-up of two faces of the Octagon from the lighting test, the decision to proceed with a coloured scheme was swiftly made and detailed designs begun. Installed in November 2021 and well used over the Christmas and New Year periods, the flexibility of the scheme design took a fresh turn when, like many other public buildings, the request was made to reproduce the Ukrainian flag. This was a relatively easy programming task, the result of which has been widely welcomed. The canvas for the illumination of Ely comprises the eight faces of the Octagon, each lit by two fittings which separately light the upper and lower parts of the elevation. The fittings are positioned on the roof surfaces of the Octagon. Conveniently, they are located perpendicular to the centre of each elevation, meaning that the upper and lower half of each face can be lit evenly and independently. If this canvas is rolled out flat, we have a grid of sixteen rectangles: two high and eight wide so that the patterns that can be generated can be drawn out as shown in the diagram above. LED colour changing systems can be controlled and programmed digitally so that animation of these coloured cells with rotating and undulating patterns can easily be achieved. Imagine the coloured cells of these grids moving along one by one to rotate the pattern around the Octagon. At Lincoln the location of the fittings was a more complex task, with many locations reliant on the accessibility of neighbouring rooftops and largely unseen locations in hidden pockets of the cathedral roof areas. Here the canvas maps out in a very different way, as there are just over fifty fittings providing the lighting to the three towers. These