News / St Mary Redcliffe Church
Vicar scales historic church spire to support solar panel project
A vicar has scaled a church spire to help raise funds for an ambitious new sustainability project.
On Tuesday afternoon, reverend Dr Brutus Green coolly executed the impressive climb up a ladder to the weather vane at the top of St Mary Redcliffe Church, which he blessed before abseiling down to the ground.
Green joined the historic church earlier in 2026 and served in the parachute regiment before entering the ordained ministry.
Cheering him on, choir boys held their rehearsal on the church roof while a crowd of supporters gathered in the churchyard below.
A Grade I*-listed landmark, St Mary Redcliffe Church stands at 84 metres tall, making it the second-highest structure in Bristol.
The last recorded occasion a vicar climbed the spire of the church was in 1872 when the newly completed structure was ascended during a thunderstorm, long after the original spire was destroyed by lightning in 1446.
Green is accustomed to heights having been part of the parachute regiment before entering ordained ministry
Money raised from the challenge will support the church’s plans to install 140 solar panels on its roof.
The project is expected to cut the building’s energy consumption by more than half, up until now provided for by an inefficient and expensive gas system.
The installation will be followed by the introduction of air source heat pumps, allowing the church to phase out its reliance on gas entirely over the coming years.
Brutus told Bristol24/7: “It’s one of the most important buildings in the country, this church.
“It’s a really astonishing piece of history and extremely beautiful.
“But it’s also not well adapted in terms of how it’s heated and all the other aspects of large buildings.
“So the building itself is really at this kind of crux of (representing) the tradition and the culture and the history, but also the need to modernise by creating energy by putting in sustainable heating.”
A crowd gathered in the churchyard to watch Green’s impressive feat
So far, the challenge has raised more than £3,500 for the church’s ambitious plans, through an online fundraiser and contributions collected from the congregation.
Green said that he was pleasantly surprised by the amount of support he had received.
“It’s not just about someone who’s running a church doing something good,” he said.
“It’s about a community coming together to make something happen that is positive change in the world.
“And I want people to feel engaged with that and I want people to feel like they’re part of that change.”
On the challenge itself, Green said: “There’s a sort of symbolic act in blessing a weather vane, which is drawing attention to the fact that the sun is going to be creating all this clean energy for us, which is great.
“It’s (also) wonderful for me because I’ve only moved to Bristol recently and it’s a really lovely way to sort of connect with the building, to be able to climb up the spire.”
Brutus told Bristol24/7 that he believes the church has a “moral obligation” to lead on the matter of climate change
In 2019, the Diocese of Bristol became one of the first dioceses in the Church of England to declare a climate emergency.
Asked about the significance of churches playing a part in reducing carbon emissions, Brutus said: “The church really understands that as a moral obligation, that the church shouldn’t just be following society, but should be leading on this.
“The church has a very strong sense from its biblical origins of needing to be a voice for those parts of our society and world which don’t have a voice.
“In terms of climate change, we’re talking about people on the other side of the planet quite often, people who have not been as involved as we have historically in terms of (causing) climate change and and are suffering, the frontline consequences of climate change in terms of disruptive weather patterns.”
All photos: Robert Browne
Read next:
Our newsletters emailed directly to you
