How can I get an enormous antique lantern restored?

Maybe not an everyday question, but getting an enormous antique lantern restored is a pretty specialist job and the splendid antique lantern in the Bracewell Smith Hall at Cliffe Castle in Bradford presented an unusual problem.  It was so vast and in a desperately poor state of repair, such as to be unable to support its own weight.

It therefore needed support to make it safe to hang. Rich (one of our restorers) welded a box steel frame inside the lantern and the lantern was rewired and restored around its new frame.

It was then successfully reinstalled in Cliffe Castle, Bradford; a complex project that was preceded by a few sleepless nights. But the end result is stunning and the Fritz Fryer team relished the challenge of restoring the largest lantern most of us had ever seen.