Just a little off the top

Workers deconstruct the 118-year-old Dunedin Gasworks Museum brick by brick on Thursday morning.

This week, the Dunedin City Council said the chimney was more damaged than first thought and needed to be shored up to prevent collapse when deconstruction work began.

Initially, the top 4m-6m of the chimney would be removed over three weeks and the structure reassessed.

It is a category 1 historic place and the removed bricks would be photographed, catalogued and stored, with the hope of being used for reconstruction.

The 25m brick chimney was damaged by an earthquake in March, which aggravated existing cracks in its top section.