This was analyzed almost as fast as it fell. Kudos.

Hi! Current New London resident here. The slight tilt was definitely a thing for as long as I've lived here. There was some discussion about an increase in tilt in the weeks leading up to the collapse. While it was not overly windy that day it is windy in general as we are right on the ocean. Also, another factor to add in was the snow, sleet and rain we received. The night before the collapse there was freezing rain through the night.

I am restoring a French barn dating from around 1700. Its roof had already partially collapsed. Through watching your video, I have gained much valuable structural loading information and I am grateful to you for taking your time to upload this video. I really appreciate your efforts.

excellent work, thank you. I used to live in New London, and the one degree tilt was widely known. Unfortunately as these congregations dwindled there was no funding for maintenance, and we don't have a National Trust to take up the slack. There's a similar but younger church building up the hill from this one - one hopes that it gets the attention that it deserves.

Already a video? Wow! The efficiency and quality of videos without the need for a subscription, thank you so much for making content for us Mike, your dedication deserves more appreciation.

The modeling really complements the commentary; more evidence, less speculation. Nice.

Wow, such great analysis so quickly! Thanks!

I would guess water infiltration and ice expansion compromised the tower at the flashing where the tower met the church roof.IMO

Very easy to follow and understand! Thanks! 👍🏻

Thank you for the first video explaining what really happened at this very Historic Church. Unfortunately unlike Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, this Church will not be restored.

Wow, quick post from when this happened! Great video as always.

They should have kept the smaller towers. Thanks for your work Mike

thanks for the detailed look at the collapse. as a restorationist and mason, now in my mid 70s, ive seen many off vertical structures, and many seem to have several things in common. (in cold climates) you will invariably find that a tower or chimney will lean toward the body of the building. in the case of chimneys on each end of the building, they will lean in opposite directions, ie toward each other to effect this lean toward the main structure. one theory of mine is that rising heat in winter from the building and roof softens the mortar on the building side of the structure, while the cold and freezing temps act on the mortar essentially lifting the exterior side. these tiny increments accumulate with time becoming permanent. also many budget repointings on soft stone buildings were done using a portaland base which is too hard for the expansion and contraction the stone goes through. this to some degree limits settling and movement on the sides where it is used. only a high lime mortar should be used on the lime based stones which this appears to be. also if the back was south facing the sun on that face in winter would have played a part. regards and best, k

From what I heard, the architect complained that the wythes (inner and outer layers) of stone were not tied together properly, and suggested the steeple tower be taken down and rebuilt. Instead, metal rods ending in square plates were installed to pull the wythes together. That held for 170 years; not bad, considering the circumstances.

Finally a new video from you!

Thank you for sharing your insights into that collapse.

It is sad how buildings fall down due to lack of maintenance in underdeveloped countries, like the United States.

A great presentation Mike Bell that shows from a professional point of view of what happened. That was powerful graphically well done.

Thank you so much for giving your time to publish such an interesting analysis ! I'm not even an Architect, Engineer nor a citizen of New London, but I love learning random fascinating things from around the world. Very educational 🙂

TL;DR: Don't ignore an architect's suggestions. Absolutely great analysis.

Great video Mike! Kudos from CT, I live a town over from New London. Btw I visited South Africa for the World Cup in 2010, you have a beautiful country!

Great analysis. It makes one wonder if the tower could have been retrofitted with some internal support structure, to transfer the steeple load directly into the ground.

Great job Thanks

A remarkable presentation!! 😯(new subscriber, Virginia)

Thank you so much for this great explanation! Best regards from Germany

Wow Mike, thank you, super intereting as usual !

I was looking at photos of the church on flickr, and found one from 2012, taken from a distance (so less liable to be distorted by perspective) which when measured shows the steeple leaning back at an angle of 1.45 degrees (measured against the flanking towers). Looking at several other photos, the right wall of the steeple (when viewing the front of the building) shows a perceptible concavity at about where the steeple joins the roof.

I'd really love to see your 3D workflow, is there any chance of you recording a session where you model a scene like this and then do your frame by frame analysis to match the model motion to a source video? Doesn't need to be a properly edited video, just a raw stream of you working would be utterly fascinating.

An 1853 historic landmark that no one tried to save?! Now it is gone, so sad

Merci du partage! Stéph.

My guess would be that the binding of the tower gave at some point. The whole thing was tied up with metal bars since the tower was built poorly right from the start. My guess would be one of the end plates on the bars holding the thing together was either snapped off or was pulled in to the wall. That would leave the walls with no support, allowing them to expand and collapse.

Extraordinary luck that there was only one person inside, and she escaped injury. The mess in the interior suggests that had a service been in progress, casualties would have been horrendous. The stone slide at the front could have killed anyone passing at the time, too. Just after lunch on a weekday might well have had passers-by.

Wow, amazing and extremely interesting. Definitely following for more :)))

excellent analysis and vid proof thanks for sharing

I live in Southeast CT, about 15 minutes from New London. This was a terrible shame.

In images of the steeple before it collapsed, if you look closely, you can see that the steeple is studded with steel bolts and cross tie reinforcements designed to keep the lower front section of the wall from bowing out. The 2011 engineer's report essentially dodges the subject of earlier stabilization efforts, other than noting that repairs had been conducted previously and that "These corrective actions appear effective, as by all visible accounts, the tower is structurally sound." A question that I might have is whether the same level of concern was given to all faces of the tower? -- or whether over the years, more concern had been given to inspecting, bracing, and grouting the exposed stonework and rather less attention was given to the interior facing sides of the wall that may have been hidden behind plaster?

Thanks, Mike! I had no idea a church steeple for any church was constructed of stone up to the very top. What a lot of weight and force, and how expensive to maintain! Where I live, there are so many churches in neighborhoods that cannot afford to maintain them that most have had their steeples removed. And they were framed and clad, not made of stone. The cost to lower this 150’ steeple would have been very high…I doubt the congregation could have afforded it. In the US, we don’t have federal assistance in maintaining privately owned historic buildings.

Very nice work. Thanks

Shame when old buildings fall. Looks like the tip of the fallen steeple landed JUST in front of that car parked behind the adjacent building. Still caked in dust that could have damaged it, but still pretty lucky, especially the woman inside the church at the time. Excellent work on the video by the way!

Amazing analysis!

That was a wonderful description, amazing you could get that all from Google Maps and use it like you did. Charles

Was the backside of that heavy steeple supported by the roof structure and not built like the facade with a base to the ground?

Great video as always. But tell me, how were you able to export the Google Earth map into Blender? How to do this?

The steeple leaned over and fell in the direction in which it was deviated from its center of gravity, just like a heavy leaded organ pipe collapses off its weight after many years when it is not standing vertically at the center of its axis of its gravitational pull. It begins to lean when it is deviated off-center from its center of gravity. The longer it leans the increasingly more off-center the lean becomes with time. If, in addition, if the tower lacks the underlying vertical support on the side of the roof to counteract the off-center lean, it will reach a point at which the weight of the progressively leaning tower is so far shifted from the tower's center of gravity that the tower will fall, collapsing of its own weight. This tower was likely "top heavy" due to the stone construction of its steeple, but had the steeple been built of wood, the collapse could have eventually occurred. There may have been inadequate vertical foundational structural support for the weight of the tower from the nave side of the church. One must also consider that the foundational support inside and under the church may have shifted or been inadequate to maintain upward vertical support required to maintain the tower's vertical position on its center of gravity. Ultimately, what happened here: Progressive inward lean off-center of gravity + gravity = collapse when limits of off-axis weight shift were exceeded. Simple physics. Gravity exists.

Great content! Luckily that Woman was not injured once the trouble started.

That's why the lean in the church must be corrected early even if it seems slight.

sad to hear such a beautiful building fell and will be demolished. thanks for the analysis

Very interesting. Thank you,

Thank you for this.

7:30 Obviously, the clock faces were out of sync. This discrepancy would cause extreme temporal torque that imbalanced the load bearing symmetry of the clock section and made the belfry develop harmonics incompatible with verticality. Many old barns were torqued into the ground by slate roofing and compact hay bales densely packed in hay lofts designed for loose hay. The stone steeple probably was the cause of the failure. Great video! Thanks!

22' is a lot for that kind of stone building.. Good work with this video..

A bit of a shame the rest of the building couldn't be salvaged and repaired. I'm not religious, but I do still feel bad when things like this happen.

I can understand not having the funds to maintain the building, but to think it was was not closed to people is shocking!

Unbelievable, did they still ring the bells? The effects of this large swinging/oscillating mass and the resonance effects when ringing are often underestimated.

YOUR description of the sagging roof on one side of the nave aspect of the church should not necessarily affect the tower and spire (but rather the roof itself) if the tower had adequate foundational vertical support itself.

#MikeBell : there is a video which shows two years ago a quote for roof air conditioning units. This, if actually installed, I would speculate the position of the easiest venting into the roof of the church would place the AC/Heating unit in the exact position you hypothesized the start of the collapse originated from. Did they in recent time add weight?

Good info👍 sad story☹️

The tower (belfry) and steeple are leaning. If there was roof damage where it connects to the tower, it is possible that over time water damage with frost weakened the tower structure resulting in increased inward leaning. Your simulation appears to indicate this as the increase in deviation from the vertical of 1--->6 degrees is associated with a collapse of support on the nave side of the tower where it meets the nave roof below the belfry..

The collapse was largely self-contained, so no harm done.

I'm suspicious the original mortar was not adequately batched on the one side, using too much sand or perhaps dirty sand. That in combination with acid within rain would over time degrade the mortar. You end up with a honeycomb like structure, similar to a loaf of bread, as the sand remains. Eventually the weight crushes the honeycomb structured sand and the whole tower is off balance.

I imagine if poor maintenance were to cause problems such as rotted roof beams near the tower, then the lean could preclude the first choice for remedying it. Whilst the building isn't very old the defect is a weakness that seems to have taken a toll over time. The building is gone after other things also went wrong. Strangely the missing steeple brought out the beauty of the adjacent 2 side towers. They look like the romans could have built them at town gates lol. I can't help but think these old buildings are a money pit.

Good afternoon! What is the name of this simulation program?

Very interesting video, but the "s" sound is very very sharp and unpleasant. You should try an equalizer or de-esser. Leaning tower of Suurhusen still standing strong :)

The Christ Church Cathedral in Montréal also had a steeple completely built of stone, and it was far too heavy and eventually, it was rebuilt with an aluminium structure in 1939. In the late 1980’s, a shopping mall was built underneath the cathedral. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_Church_Cathedral_(Montreal)

Never leave the safety of your structure up to God.

Even with shoddy construction work it has been standing for over 170 years, the questions what happened with it *now* ? I believe bad maintenance is the cause of this, most likely water ingress that erroded the structural walls. Probably damaged gutters on the inside wall between the tower and the main building, leading to water eating up the mortar along the inner wall. The structural failure seems to have affected one of the corners, therefore the sideways collapse. One can clearly see the large and dark visible stains from the excess water running down the sides of the building all the way from the roof down to the ground, all the water that should've fallen down the gutters.

Was it while the 1:30 bells sounded?

From their website - “It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.” ―Annie Dillard you just couldn't make this up.

That was absolutely fascinating.

Impressive work

If only they asked their imaginary friend to save its church!

As someone else has pointed out, there are metal plates evident on the facade in modern photos that indicate several iron tensioning rods were placed at some point to strengthen the tower. Did one or more of them rust out owing to water infiltration. Was there a ground shift caused by recent heavy rains? Poor construction and maintenance too? Often multiple factors line up in to cause many catastrophes.

He posted this video less than a week after the event.

Thank you for this. Could I ask you to shed some light on how the side galleries were destroyed? I can understand the organ gallery, being right at the very back where the tower was, but I think I have seen pictures showing that this church had side galleries? If so, from the ruins pictured here, it is apparent that they were destroyed in the collapse. What was the mechanism of this?

Maintenance and upkeep is important people

I hope this is rebuilt, the architecture beauty in this stone building is amazing

The building passed a structural inspection ten years ago!

A bit weird how often buildings just collapse like that in the USA. Like are structural engineers and renovations not a thing over there?

Chesterfield Parish Church says "hello". 👋

A spire collapse by someone called Bell, nominative determinism strikes again.

"1:30 on Jan 25, it all came tumbling down."

Omg there was a person inside? How scary

How sad. They just don’t make them like this anymore.

I don't consider myself religious but man could they pull funds and labor to build beautiful things. I's a shame that modern precautions weren't taken. Why?

This could have been a horrific catastrophe, thank god it wasn't. I live in Philadelphia and the city is full of old churches, many of which are in horrible physical condition. Churches deteriorating beyond repair is not uncommon here, thankfully nowadays, most are caught before becoming disasters. This, however, more often than not results in demolition. It is painful to see our built heritage becoming heaps of rubble. It says a lot about our society how we neglect works of beauty. It goes beyond churches, where much of our historic vernacular architecture is left to rot. This is the sad reality in this miserable hyper consumerist hell we call America.

Oh God. 😢

So much for the next thousand yrs

Leaning from the beginning? Accelerating lean? Didn't hear that on the evening news. Good work. How come there's only video of video and from just one camera? There's got to be more cameras around that caught this.

Aleksanterin kirkko Tampereelta päässyt esimerkkikuvaan. ❤

the 6 degree list was new info for me.

1:24 architect was concerned in 1851 - 2 years before it was finished! WTH 1:50 professional eye spots damage of concern 5:17 6⁰ steeple tilt!

So.. wtf wasn't it dismantled and rebuilt decades ago...

Is this something that occurs frequently?

If anyone saw it, considering it is a church, they probably did what they know how to do. Pray

But the church never had any maintenance.??

I have not found any pictures showing the inside but my guess would be the tower's side facing the roof rested on two pillars and those two pillars subsided slightly during the original construction and after 170 years they started to sink even more, dragging the tower with it. I doubt the collapse has anything to do with defective masonary near the roofline, the failure must have happened much lower in the structure. The tower was basically like a chair that has two legs placed on concrete and two on sand and the load put on the chair results in uneaven sinking and tilt.

Pretty interesting

Do you think the roof contributed to the weakening of the tower structure?

Eritque arcus icthus, enough said!

Was there a lot of vibration from the construction area?