Using a
ladder for a job means you’re planning on moving it frequently, otherwise a
temporary scaffold tower would be a sturdier and safer option.  The portability of ladders is one of the
factors that make them ideal for many tasks. 
This got us thinking about the longest amount of time any ladder has
been left in the same position.  You
might think that a year or two, up a scaffold on a temporarily paused building
project would be about right, but in fact the answer is nearly 300 years. 

The ladder in
question is at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, which is shared
by six different Christian denominations. 
The church is said to be on the spot where Jesus was crucified, so it
holds a lot of meaning for people of the Christian faith and as such, no
denomination wants to give up their claim to the holy temple.  The Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and
Armenian Orthodox churches are the main (and richest) claimants, while the
Syriac, Coptic and Ethiopian Orthodox also use the building.  Several other denominations lost their
footing centuries ago, and Protestant denominations were formed too late to
even try to claim a place there.

This
fractured ownership has caused no end of problems and there has been a lot of
arguing over who is responsible for what duties and which areas of the church –
responsibility confers ownership, so even the simple act of sweeping the floor
can be construed as claiming ownership of that part of the church.  Centuries of in-fighting were brought to an
uneasy end in 1757 when Ottoman sultan Othman III issued a decree called the
“Status Quo” which formalised the ownership and power structures of the church
and its various congregations. 

The Status
Quo, reaffirmed in 1852 and now considered to be the last word on the matter,
contains rules about who does what, and when. 
There is a rota for closing up, for cleaning, and no member of one
denomination may light a candle without express permission from the other
denominations because the act of lighting the candle, and placing it in a
candlestick, could imply ownership of that candlestick and the area of the
church it occupies.  If all six
denominations consent to the lighting of a candle it is then considered to be a
joint act without any claim of ownership attached.

The Status
Quo, despite being very thorough, says nothing about ladders, and so a ladder
has been left leaning against an upper floor window since at least 1757, and
probably earlier since an engraving from 1728 shows the ladder in situ.  No-one knows who left the ladder there, or
why, but the simple five-rung wooden ladder has stayed in (almost) the same
place for up to 300 years.  Some suggest
it was a stonemason’s ladder left there after repairs or work to the facade,
while others posit that it was used by clerics to access the outside and even
grow vegetables on the wide window ledge during times of conflict when they
could not leave the church.

As the task
of moving the ladder isn’t covered by the exhaustive Status Quo, no-one is
allowed to move it since doing so would constitute an aggressive claim of
ownership.  It was moved in 1997 as a
prank – a visitor called Andy pulled the ladder back in through the window and
hid it, trying to make a point about how ridiculous he thought the Status Quo
was.  It was found and replaced, and
remained in place until 2009 when another tourist moved it along the ledge for
a laugh.  The change was noticed and the
church authorities moved it back.

So there you
have it, the longest a ladder has been in the same place could be nearly 300
years.  If we assume nobody has accidentally
moved the ladder between the Status Quo being enacted and Andy’s 1997 prank,
that’s a certain 240 years of staying in exactly the same position.  We’ve all done jobs with ladders that have
taken longer than expected, but even the slowest worker could get the task done
in that time!