GIVE IT A WEEK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 133, 7 June 1932, Page 9

GIVE IT A WEEK.

ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL. it COIXAPSE ANY TIME." ENGINEER'S ALARMING OPINION. Five years ago Mr. Alexander Drew, consulting engineer, warned the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's that theMdoinc of the cathedral would collapse iSTfive years unless the supporting piersjweru immediately repaired. "In 1925 I* gave the dome five years," eaid Mr. Drew to a "Daily Express" representative, "but now I wouldn't give it a week. The danger to-day is extreme, and the collapse may occur at any time. "Should we have a realty dry summer," he added, "the sand and gravel bed on which the foundations rest, and which js being continuously drained, would subside still more and become dangerously unstable. The entire edifice would then be in imminent danger of crashing." Mr. Drew was called in by Mr. Mervyn Macartney, the cathedral architect, during the repairs undertaken in 1915. Over a period of two years he made frequent examinations of the structure.

In 1925 Mr. Drew sent to Dean Inge a report in which he emphasised the danger to the cathedral and submitted a plan, for saving the dome. He received from the dean a postcard containing the single sentence: "Thank you for your kind letter about the cathedral." In this report Mr. Drew submitted that the cathedral should be closed at once to the public, the building shored up inside and out, the piers rebuilt and carried down below the bed of sand into a sound foundation in the London blue clay.

"I said in 1925," continued Mr. Drew, "that there was danger of the dome going like the Campanile at Venice, which fell in 1.902 after repeated warnings had been given—and ridiculed, ine dome of St. Paul's would come down 'with a run.' All the piers are sod efte present-day conditions.

Were 51/-.