MANY times since we moved into our new offices here at The Press, we have heard and felt a giant’s footsteps approaching. Sometimes we have felt the building shake with its noisy activity.

The heavy thuds weren’t caused by a fairytale escapee, but the workmen immediately next door demolishing what was left of the old offices. From the windows, we have watched the steady transformation as the old The Press site is turned into four-storey accommodation blocks.

Working on the edge of a building site, as we have for months, does make you hype-raware of construction projects and the work involved.

So the other day when I was walking past York Minster, I found myself wondering just how long it took to build the cathedral that we see today. The answer is 250 years or thereabouts. That’s getting on for eight generations. They thought long term in those days. The archbishop, architect and builders who commissioned and designed it and laid the foundation stones knew that neither they nor their children nor their grandchildren would see it finished, but their great, great, great, great, great grandchildren would.

They were prepared to empty their treasury - cathedrals come expensive - and spend their entire working lives on something they could never complete, and they were prepared to trust that generations unborn would raise the funds to finish it off and see it through to successful completion while simultaneously coping with a lifetime of noise, dust, disruption and church services in makeshift accommodation.

We benefit from the long-term forethought of our ancestors every time we admire their handiwork. Yet, at the same time we give no thought to our far distant descendants beyond murmuring something along the lines that we cannot conceive what their world will be like so how can we plan ahead?

Could the medieval churchmen and town dignitaries have imagined our world with its aeroplanes, Internet and electric power? To them, we would have been magicians and wizards. That didn’t stop them planning for the distant future.

You can’t imagine that happening now. These days you have to show a quick return to satisfy shareholders of you are a commercial enterprise (maximum of a year) or politicians if you are a public enterprise ( preferably within a week, but certainly before the next election). As I admired York Minster, I wondered which of today’s buildings will be around in 800 years time?

I concluded there would be very few because these days we don’t build to last that long. We happily knock down a 40-year-old building as unfit for purpose and rebuild it according to 2014 needs, then knock it down in another 40 years as being unfit for 2054 purposes. The materials we use are not chosen for their longevity, but their appearance, their price and, sometimes, their environmental standing.

But there is one common construction that will stand the test of time, despite all that we can do - the artificial mounds that cover our landfill sites. Beneath their covering of soil are great piles of plastics in deep pits that will stubbornly not rot or decompose in several centuries and therefore cannot be recycled. Every day we send great lorry loads of rubbish to increase their size.

Will our far distant descendants surveying a landscape of landfill applaud us, as we applaud the mediaeval generations that built the Minster, or will they curse us for cluttering up their lives with endless piles of rubbish, disguised as hills?

Our ancestors took time to give us buildings to cherish. Next time you go past York Minster, remember their generosity in the work they did for us, contrast it with today’s priorities and pity our descendants.