What is a paternoster lift? Essex university elevator goes viral on TikTok

A video of a rare type of lift has gone viral after a university posted about it on their TikTok account. The University of Essex has posted numerous videos of the paternoster lift to its social media account - and hundreds of thousands of people have viewed them. This may have something to do with the fact that the special kind of lift is one of only three which still work in the UK. 

The second can be found at the University of Sheffield and the third, which was brought back in to operation during the Covid-19 pandemic after being out of service for seven years, can be found at Northwick Park Hospital in London. The lifts at the University of Essex and University of Sheffield have also both had to undergo various renovation works over the years. Most recently, the paternoster lift in Sheffield was closed for around a month between August and September 2022 to allow for essential maintenance work and the machine in Essex was renovated between 2020 and 2021 to install a traffic light system to improve safety.

The paternoster lift was invented over 150 years ago, but it’s still fascinating people today due to the unusual way it moves and allows people to travel quickly between several floors. It uses open compartments on a continuously moving loop, with one side going up while the other goes down.

Jonathan White, director of library and cultural services at the University of Essex, told the BBC that it was fantastic to see the videos of the lift go viral. He added: “It shows how genuinely intrigued and fascinated people from across the world are by it.”

The lift was created by Peter Ellis, an architect from Liverpool, in the 1860s. It was given its name because of the system's resemblance to rosary prayer beads and the word paternoster is Latin for ''Our Father', which begins the Lord's Prayer. Keith Lilley, Director of Estates and Facilities Management and IT at the University of Sheffield, said: “We're extremely proud that our paternoster, which is the tallest still in operation in Europe, is still going strong. Thousands of students will have fond memories of hopping on and off the paternoster.”

Up until 2017 a fourth paternoster lift had been in operation in the UK, at the University of Leicester's Attenborough Tower, but it was closed because officials said it became too expensive to maintain.