One of Britain's best loved castles is now under wraps – you can see its big white 'tent' for miles around.
And Castle Drogo, in Drewsteignton, near Exeter, seems to have been gift-wrapped for Christmas.
The last large castle built in Britain is at present covered by one of the biggest "tents" in England – so big that if you laid all the poles that support it end to end they stretch over 60 miles.
This is Castle Drogo today – an historic Devon structure which is undergoing one of the biggest repair jobs ever undertaken by the National Trust.
The charity is spending £11 million on refurbishing the place, which means that the great castle above the Teign Gorge is now playing host to an immense building project that boasts all manner of superlative facts and figures…
One of the main problems at the Lutyens-designed castle was that the large flat roof areas were leaking. To protect the place while fixing the problem, the trust has now erected one of the biggest scaffolding expanses in the UK, consisting of no fewer than 24,700 poles.
If all these – plus the 3,990 scaffolding boards – were laid end-to-end they'd stretch 63.4 miles, a direct line distance that would take you from Drogo to Cardiff.
"The total tonnage of scaffold is 544 tons," says restoration project manager Tim Cambourne. "On top of that is something called a 'kentledge' which is basically concrete ballast to weigh the scaffold down – and that weighs in at 250 tonnes!
"The total area of temporary roofing is 1565 square metres," Mr Cambourne told the Western Morning News. "That's the equivalent of six tennis courts. The area of side sheeting is another 3751 square metres."
No wonder you can see the giant tent covering Castle Drogo, at Drewsteignton near Exeter, for many miles around.
It is arguable that no other job in the country is requiring the services of so many specialist stonemasons working in granite over such a long period of time. And it's going to take the trust's teams and contractors five long years to put the leaky castle right.
During that period a mind-boggling 680 tonnes of granite will be removed from the roof, piece by piece, only to be replaced in the exact same positions by the time the work is finished. Added to that, more than 60 kilometres mortar joints will be removed and replaced – which if stretched end-to-end would run from Drogo to Lundy.
"Removing all the upstanding parapets and structures above roof level means taking around 2,600 granite blocks off and down to the ground before rebuilding," said Mr Cambourne. "We will also remove, repair and rebuild 913 brass framed windows – we have taken out over 270 to date…
"We're also removing the asphalt from the flat roofs and replacing them with a modern membrane system – this is equivalent to the area of almost two football pitches," he added.
So how is one of the biggest repair jobs on any historic building in the UK getting along, given the stormy weather recently?
"It is going really well at the moment, despite the storms," replied Mr Cambourne. "We had a little bit of damage in the gales on Wednesday – not enough to let water in – but we did close the scaffold at 3pm because it could have been dangerous to work up there."
He said the present big white "tent" would remain covering the major part of the castle for the next 18 months – it would then be replaced by a smaller scaffolding which will cover the north wing in mid-2015.
