St Mary le Wigford, Lincoln

One exceedingly sunny day, I was invited to visit a series of City Centre churches in Lincoln:

St Peter at Gowts, St Mary le Wigford, and St Benedict’s

Having already explored St Peter at Gowts, we headed north, back into the city centre proper, to visit St Mary le Wigford. This is Lincoln's civic church, founded in the 1000's, with a tower surviving from that period. Nowadays it’s hemmed in by the city, and sat right next to the railway.

Inside she's a fairly typical but charming city centre church, with some nasty 1970's additions in the south aisle that I very pointedly did not photograph - and a bright green ceiling!

St Mary le Wigford is also home to the most risky tower climb of my life so far.

The first few stages of the tower climb were actually extremely easy. First you go up a small narrow wooden staircase, that takes you up to a room with a wrought iron spiral staircase. Take that staircase up, and you're in the ringing room. This contains the first ladder. It’s chunky, wide, and fixed very firmly to the wall. The rungs spun under my hands as I climbed it, but otherwise it was easy and a pleasure to climb.

That ladder takes you to the half-floor containing the clock mechanism.

From there you take a short but unsecured wooden ladder that’s just propped up against the wall, and up through another trapdoor into the bell chamber.

It was at that point that the climb got a bit hairy. The third ladder was (loosely) fixed to the wall, as was the fourth, but what lay at the top was… a problem.

The ladder stopped in midair, a little bit above it a diagonal roof beam jutted out and overhead. Three or so feet to the right, starting at about the same level as the top rung, was the next, (and final) ladder.

Between me and it... Empty space and a big drop onto a bell frame.

To get to the final ladder I had to grab onto the roof beam, hugging it as I swung my legs over the gap. Bending backwards and twisting my lower body to the right, I wedged my feet onto the beam at the foot of that final ladder. Then I somehow hauled myself upright. I had to empty the back pockets of my jeans because at one point I was in such a bizarre mid-air squatting position that everything almost fell out of them.

If I slipped, I'd have broken my back.

Then onto the final ladder. It was long. It was metal. Every rung was so rusted I tested it before putting significant weight onto it, always ready for one to break under me. As I climbed, it bounced with every step.

I hauled myself up, through the forest of ancient wood, some of it possibly the original beams from when the tower was first built, 1000 years ago.

Finally, at the top of the ladder, I used my head and shoulders to push my way through the extraordinarily heavy lead trapdoor onto the roof. Hoping the extra weight and pressure wouldn't break the rusted rung of the ladder I was standing on.

And suddenly I was up, out in the blazing sunlight. Standing atop the church, high above the city, I found myself staring out at what is quite possibly one of the best views of Lincoln Cathedral on earth.

It was definitely worth the climb.

Filthy and sweaty I made my way back down to the ground, and, after washing my hands which were, by that point, literally black with grime, I headed to the third and final church of the day, St Benedict’s.