Inside Notre Dame

what it was like to visit the rebuilding project

I could actually smell the ashes of poor old Notre Dame Cathedral in the air as I walked across Paris.

Six years ago, I was on my way to the Palace of Versailles for Easter, and I wanted to change from the metro to the RER at St-Michel Notre Dame.

Of course the station was closed, because of the fire the week before.

I found my way above ground with the enthusiastic assistance of a gentleman who I’d taken to be a Metro employee, but who actually turned out to be a lawyer.

When I thanked him for going out of his way, he stopped me, saying:

‘‘At this moment, everyone just wants to help.’

At that moment, I discovered the wonderful secret that was hidden inside the disaster of the great cathedral burning down. The tragedy created cooperation, resilience and renewal.

I was lucky enough to revisit Notre Dame over the next five years to follow the work of rebuilding it, and I saw the best of human endeavour in the form of thousands of people working together to create something remarkable.

I loved helping to make some television programmes about their work, and I hope, if you’re at all interested in building conservation, or restoration, or sculpture, or stained glass, you’ll have had the chance to watch, on the BBC, or if you’re not in the UK, on the National Geographic channel.

There, you’ll see the incredible skills and attention to detail that were needed to bring about this project of a lifetime.

But what I can give you here at MY LIFE IN THE PAST is a flavour of the less telegenic stuff that was involved in actually visiting the site.

I stayed in a hotel just across the Seine from the Isle de France. This meant that I could walk to work for our 8 o’clock entry onsite. But it also meant, as this was so central and hotels so expensive, that I had the world’s smallest attic room. I kept my food on my window ledge, because there was no space for it inside. Most of it got eaten by birds!

There was no point in trying to get an early cup of coffee from the café by the entrance to the site. It was run by the world’s grumpiest man. I was extremely tickled by how closely he fitted the stereotype of the rude Parisian waiter. I’d sometimes ask for a cup of coffee just for the thrill of being brutally told I couldn’t have one.

The giant city of portacabins just east of the cathedral was to me one of the wonders of my visits, alongside gargoyles designed by Viollet-le-Duc, or thirteenth-century stained glass. I was just stunned by the extent of the facilities needed for hundreds of restoration workers.

Once through the site hoarding, the footbath and the security turnstile, getting into the actual cathedral was quite challenging.

The first thing that had to happen after the fire was the decontamination of the site. I didn’t go in at all until that was nearly finished.

After extensive safety briefings about the dangers of lead dust, we were given an entire set of clothes to wear, including socks and wellies. My colleague with very small feet had to get her own special safety boots made, because you weren’t allowed on site without them.

Having put on all our layers, we then walked through a shower cubicle with two doors to get into the site.

On the way out, we had to take off absolutely all our clothes and leave them in the dirty zone.

Then we had to emerge through the shower, getting wet this time, hopefully to find our own clothes waiting for us in the changing room on the other side.

This meant that, say, coming offsite to have lunch took an awfully long time.

At first we’d go to a café on the Isle de France, mainly on the basis that Agnès Poirier, a writer we admired, had once been seen there.

Then later on, we saved time by just staying in the portcabins eating sandwiches.

A very small cup of very strong coffee was available out of a machine for a euro.

By later trips, I was smuggling in my travel kettle, and I discovered a plug socket in the ladies’ loo where I could make a discreet cup of tea.

My film crew colleagues who were there every day following the action quickly decided to save time by stopping having lunch altogether. As dedicated as any of the conservators, these producers and filmmakers patiently watched and waited until there was a pause in the work long enough for the experts to find time to talk about what they were doing.

There were just a few blessed minutes at the end of the day when work had officially stopped, and we could squeeze in a few pieces to camera without the endless grinding, bellowing and banging sounds going on.

Inside the site, I was amazed not only the ancient fabric but also the modern scaffolding.

The scaffolding lift would take us up right eight floors to the scaffolding roof.

I say the ‘lift,’ but to me it seemed more like a slightly wobbly open basket. I really hate heights, which has been a problem throughout a career of working in historic buildings. It was worth ascending, though, to go up to the top, where I crept gingerly along precarious-looking planked walkways to see, for example, the ‘forest’, the name for the timber beams put in to recreate the roof.

Meanwhile, workers in harness gaily climbed or abseiled past me, hammering away entirely as if they weren’t suspended 35 metres above the ground.

I was so impressed with the solidarity and the enthusiasm of everyone we met. But there were of course cultural barriers to overcome.

At one point we were filming the poultice being applied to stonework to draw out the bad salts inside it, and I told the conservator I thought it looked like porridge.

She was horrified by the comparison.

‘I don’t eat it,’ she said, ‘I am French.’

Vive la France!

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Have you been to see the finished Notre Dame? Would you like to? There are just a couple of places left on a tour I’m joining there this summer! (AND there’s a cheeky little discount available for Luciferian supporters of this newsletter!)

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like this one, about the ghost at Hampton Court Palace. Thanks for reading!