First published in EADT Suffolk magazine, July 2005

DAVE Peacock has laid more than half a million bricks in St Edmundsbury Cathedral, but you won't see any of them.

For five years Dave has been carefully building the walls of the new tower, the cloister, a gallery overlooking the altar and a new chapel at the cathedral in Bury St Edmunds. Everywhere he has gone, the masons have been close behind, and every inch of his expert work is now clad in fine stone.

Bricklayer Dave Peacock at work

"It's a bit of a sore point, actually," he grins. "One of the last things to be done will be a Tudor-style chimney and I'm really hoping they let me build that, because it's the only place the brickwork will show."

Mind you, Dave is still pleased and proud to have played such a crucial role in one of the most unusual building projects of recent times.

"I won't enjoy going back to modern bricklaying after this," he admits.

"This has been a great project. The cathedral's had good value for money, and everyone working on it has learned a lot.

"There's no cement in the new building, except in the concrete foundations. All the bricks and stonework have been laid with lime mortar, as they would have been in the middle ages. It took a lot of experimenting, a lot of trial and error, to get the mix exactly right, but we did it.

"The tower is built to last 1,000 years and there's no steel reinforcing in it, just good brick, stone and lime mortar.

"It may be a bit late, but it's a proper millennium project. It's far better value than the Millennium Dome, which is basically just a multi-million-pound tent - and it will be here for centuries longer."

That is pretty much what I concluded when I first reported on the tower project for Suffolk magazine in December 2000 [see here].

In the years since then, the project has over-run its deadlines (though not its budget) and led to a deal of disharmony between the architects and the cathedral authorities that would fit well in a novel by Anthony Trollope.

The tale of the disabled-access entrance - should it be through the west door, the south door or the north-west porch, should it be involve ramps or lifts - is an on-going chapter.

One wall had to be moved after it was built, in order to accommodate a new idea for a place of peaceful prayer.

The sheer amount of scaffolding...

The sheer amount of scaffolding the project would require, and how long it would take to erect and take down, was severely under-estimated.

There have been mutterings of discontent among many of the county's dwindling congregations.

Some parishes contributed enthusiastically to the tower appeal, while others grumbled at the expenditure of £12million on the cathedral while their own ancient churches are in danger of collapsing through neglect.

Some see scant consolation in the fact that the money, raised by public and private donations, with a substantial hand-out from the Millennium Commission, would never have been available for any other church in the county. Contrary to some moans, the diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich contributed only a small sum to the cathedral project - less than some individuals.

While all the controversies have rumbled on, however, the crowning glory of Dean James Atwell's vision for the cathedral has gone on growing.

The tower has emerged, more or less triumphantly, from its wrappings of scaffolding poles and plastic.

In true Trollope style, though, the building work will not in fact be completed when its "completion" is celebrated on July 22-24, and there have been doubts over whether or not the Prince of Wales will attend.

Bizarrely, and frustratingly, it will never be possible for members of the public to see the view from the top of the tower - except in the form of photos on computer screens in visitor areas. The stairway to the top is simply too narrow for officially acceptable safety.

It has not yet even been possible to see up inside the tower, again for safety reasons.

It will be some time yet before visitors can crane their necks to view the elegant and colourful vaulted ceiling, which so far only exists in artist's drawings.

Money for this finishing touch has now been raised, but for years it was uncertain whether it would ever be done. It is just one example of the way the plans have changed and grown even as the building itself has been changing and growing.

Prince Charles has been an enthusiastic supporter of the cathedral development from the first, as befits a man known for his love of "traditional" over "modern" architecture.

Others are not so sure. A straw poll of passers-by in Bury's beautiful Abbey Gardens garnered a range of views from the predictable "Waste of money" to the optimistic "It'll put Bury on the map and might bring in a few visitors".

The architecture critic Hugh Pearman has enthused about the tower's "undeniable power". He says, "It's the last of its kind, and last things resonate. It's hard to imagine the Church of England ever embarking on such a project again."

And apart from the undoubted pleasure it has given the architects and craftsmen, there are still doubts as to why anyone in the 21st century should create a new building in a style 600 years old.

Architect Warwick Pethers, whose Gothic Design Practice lobbied successfully for the job of finishing the cathedral, says: "A strong argument for this kind of architecture today is bio-diversity. We should never let anything die out completely. You never know when you might need it again."

He says he has had more support from other architects than his late mentor Stephen Dykes Bower, who began the job of converting the former parish church of St James into a cathedral in the 1940s.

Inside: looking down into the nave from the new north gallery

Dykes Bower, working against the grain of his times, was continuing the Victorian Gothic revival well into the era of modernism. Pethers, who learned his craft more or less literally at Dykes Bower's feet, perhaps suffers less ridicule because we live now in more inclusive times. Today's style, in architecture as in many other aspects of fashion, is largely a matter of allowing all previous styles to co-exist at once.

So maybe Bury's mock-medieval look is not as far from the spirit of our times as it might at first appear.

Perhaps more pertinent than the general question "Why gothic?" is the question why build in Suffolk what is little more than a pared-down copy of Canterbury Cathedral's famous Bell Harry tower?

Pethers says gothic architecture is "a pan-European language spoken in a local accent". If so, his accent is as wonky as those TV actors who can't differentiate between Suffolk and Somerset .

Euan Allen, project co-ordinator, suggests the tower is in keeping with those of the fine old Suffolk churches at Lavenham and Long Melford - but that is only true, or relevant, up to a point.

Lavenham may be one of Suffolk 's best-known churches, but its tower, finished in the 1520s, is later than most in the county and rather severe. The new cathedral tower is not really very like it.

As for Long Melford, though it is a lovely old church, its tower is barely a century old, and in a style borrowed from the West Country.

All in all, Bury's new "old" tower is little more fitting than if it had been built in modernist steel and concrete - though in one important sense it does suit its environment.

The beautiful mellow stone in which it is clad is from the same Barnack quarry near Peterborough as the grand Norman bell-tower which stands alongside the cathedral, the chief surviving relic of what was once England's grandest abbey.