Do you know what a Paternoster lift is?

[Pinksands1]

I dont know how I had never heard of this type of lift before. The wikipedia definition says 'consists of a chain of open compartments that move continuously I'm a loop up and down a building without stopping. Passengers can step on or off at any floor they like'.

Anyway, they look bloody terrifying. I am so uncoordinated, I just know I would faff about trying to get on quickly and do myself an injury! Has anyone used one? Are they as scary as they look?

update on Essex's paternoster life

Yes, the Essex one wasn’t working recently, my sister is there and I keep asking her if she has used it yet. Maybe it has been fixed during lockdown. I used it a few times as a student - I wasn’t at Essex but used to use their library.

@MorrisZapp

I certainly do. I used the one at Rummidge University to trap and apprehend the lunatic professor who resented me so much he tried to kill me.

Tbh I was more worried about who's wife I'd be bunking with that night. My own wanted to cut my balls off and Professor Swallow's was looking decidedly thin lipped too.

Nice work! (or possibly one of the others in the trilogy)

The one at Leicester terrified me. I'd rather go up the stairs.

There was definitely one at Leeds University in the late 70s/early 80s. I know cos I was there.

I didn't know the name!

I know about them but only because I've been watching Babylon Berlin, set in the 1920s, in which people are forever leaping in and out of them. I'm a bit weird about stepping over gaps, and things that involve timing, so it makes me nervous.
They're a beautiful design though.

I suppose it's a bit like stepping into a revolving door? They give me the fear too

The Paternoster is definitely still in use in the Arts Tower at Sheffield. Well, it’s all closed at the moment, but it was up and running until just before lockdown.

There is also a set of ‘normal’ lifts, though, so don’t let the brilliant Paternoster put you off applying to Sheffield uni if you’re a weirdo Paternoster avoider!

I remember the one at Birmingham dental hospital very fondly too, I used to dream about it for years after leaving. The new hospital doesn’t have one

One of my customers in Sweden had one (they are, alas in a shiny new building, also without the bomb shelters which were a feature of the old one) and it scared the beejeezus out of me at first, and of course I had to look all confident and keep chatting

so don’t let the brilliant Paternoster put you off applying to Sheffield uni if you’re a weirdo Paternoster avoider!

TBF, it’s a disability access issue too, so you’re a tiny bit harsh to label all of the avoiders “weirdos”. I’d cause a major incident if I tried to wheel onto one.

Ah, another Sheffield arts grad here, with fond memories of the Paternoster. We used to get stuck between floors occasionally and I recall someone passing a couple of chairs through the gap so we could sit more comfortably . I don't recall going over the top but I'm sure we did.

[quote Pinksands1]@whatswithtodaytoday ah yes I was reading about the one at Leicester Uni. The students were said to be very fond of it and didnt want it to go out of use.[/quote]
Count me out. And it wasn't like you could wait until it was less busy to practise or anything because it went faster if no one was on it, and if there was no one there to push you off then you would indeed be on it all day. It was unbelievably terrifying - and I think all the more so because there were so many people on it and getting on and off like it was the most normal thing in the world when in reality it was evil and no one else could see the evil.

I've seen the Sheffield University one.

Essex uni library. Terrifying

@Ohffs66

Only because I read about them on another thread on here a few months ago!

Did you not notice the two ordinary lifts right behind you, near the stairs?🤔

My Dad worked at Birmingham Uni in the 70s and 80s. The paternoster there was the stuff of my childhood nightmares. Possibly because if we went to visit my Dad at work they didn’t want us wandering off and playing in it so they told me that if you went over the top you would be flipped out of the carriage (?) thingy and plunge to your death, and if you went round at the bottom you would be squashed flat. My brother was a bugger for disappearing to find trouble when he was little so it probably seemed worth terrifying their well behaved but nervous older child in order to dissuade their pain in the arse younger one from his usual shenanigans.

In my mind the paternoster was bright orange. Possible because all memories of the 70s are orange and brown...

I wasn't terrified of the Essex University one! I had never seen one before; it was great fun. As people say, no worse than an escalator, they used to terrify me for years.

It wasn't all orange and brown in the Seventies at Essex when I was there. The floors in the Library were colour coded. Social Science, which I was doing, had one wall painted red, with pink chairs. One floor was yellow, one blue, and one another colour, and I don't now remember which was which.

Uni of Leicester's has gone now. I graduated in 2017 and I think they got rid just after or if not the year after, I remember reading it in an alumni email and was gutted! It was a lovely feature of the uni. The last piece of coursework I handed in in that building I then went right to the top to look out the windows despite all the signs telling you not to do that. The view is amazing. I remember that moment so vividly. I had a great time at uni.

DMU's must have been gone for awhile as DH started there in 2013 and there wasn't one there then.

Were they common in hospitals? I have a memory of seeing a paternoster lift (marked as staff only), alongside two conventional lifts, in the old hospital in Peterborough.

I had never heard of these!!!
I think I would be one of these people taking a million years to get on or off, I dont have the best coordination!

I was at Essex in the 90s and did most of my work on the top floor so had to stay alert in case I missed the stop.

I didn't realise that DMU had one too. Leicester must have been paternoster city!!