The Reverend Paul Twelves, rector of this parish for over 20 years, from 1954 through 1975, was gratious enough to put his remberences of the building of this magnificient Stone Wall to "paper". Thank you ever so much, Reverend Twelves, for sharing this wonderful story with all of us!
"Bring a stone and your offering, but leave the stone outside." Those were the instructions given members of All Saints' back in the early autumn of 1961.
And thus a rock pile, about ten tons, grew on the patch of lawn between the Chapel, Parish House and parking lot. But we needed more stones. A parishioner who owned a farm invited the contractor to roam his fields and 'take your pick.' Another 120 tons of stone were gathered.
After the concrete footing for the wall was poured I began to get excited about seeing it go up. I had visions of a solitary, master stone mason working on this project, delighting in his (yes, his) work as art... as offering... a wall built to the glory of God.
It puzzled me then when five men showed up one day, trowels and buckets in hand. I watched the architect talk with them, carefully explaining how mortar was to be set. Later he and I chatted: "So, it's a stone mason company we have? And they are a team?" I asked. "Not really," said the architect, "The contractor went to the union hall yesterday and hired them." "You mean they've never worked together before?" "As far as I know, they've never worked together before," he responded patiently. That's not quite how I envisioned the wall being built -- the wall that would dominate this place of worship.
Up it went. The architect had indeed been clear in his instructions, and the masons had been extraordinarily diligent in following those instructions. It does look like the work of a single, solitary, master mason.
As the wall got higher it got narrower. And the work team went from five masons to four, and finally to a single mason.
The shelves for the flowers. The architect spent an afternoon roaming the fields and digging here and there, and finally came back with two large, irregular stones that would serve as flower shelves. Some in the congregation thought the flowers should be on the altar -- that's the way it's always been. And when they first saw those rocks, they were sure of it! But once the flowers were in place in simple, elliptical, pottery pots, with the splendid wall setting them off, dissent ended.
The wall was all it was hoped it would be. We watched the sun play on it at different times of the year. We discovered the intricate network of spider webs connecting all the stones. We looked at the shadow of the skylight mullions forming a kind of Jacob's ladder across the wall. We, like you, saw all kind of beauty and meaning in that wall.
But alas! Early on it leaked. Actually there was a certain charm in watching the water trickle down from one stone to another. But then there was mop up. And there were long term consequences with a leak.
Both contractor and architect were summoned. They were stumped, because, as is so often the case, there was no way to tell where the leak originates. They turned a high powered hose on the wall. Nothing leaked. Finally they made two recommendations: a) spray the wall with some fancy new stuff called silicone, and, b) wait for dirt to settle into the mortar and plug the leak. We did both. In due time the wall stopped leaking. I'm guessing dirt solved the problem.
Paul Twelves
November 9, 1998
Here's a picture of the stone wall showing the Jacob's Ladder effect