DOME OF ST. PAUL'S

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18342, 27 March 1925, Page 10

DOME OF ST. PAUL'S

A DISTURBING STATEMENT.

CITY OFFICIAL'S £2,000,000 SCHEME.

ITBOII OT7K OWN" CORRESPONDENT.) LONDON, February 11. Mr .John Todd, the District Surveyor for-the Corporation of the City of London, was the official who was responsible for the "dangerous structure" notice served on the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's Cathedral on Christmas Eve. Quite independently of* the committee that has been formed .to go into the question of the repairs that are necessary, he has issued a statement to the Press which comes rather as a bombshell to those who have been considering that an expenditure of about £200.000 would be enough for the restoration of the defective piers. Mr Todd declares that Wren designed and built, properly, but, unfortunately, he filled the piers with inferior materials, though they did not believe for a moment that that was his fault. They were always grumbling at liini for spending so much money, and asking him, metaphorically, to make £200,000 do the work of £2,000,000. The result was that the rubble filling the piers, which was never strong enough, had in the course of ages settled down, and the 12-inch stonework encasing the rubble filling, and the outer stonework that they saw in the Cathedral, had taken far more weight than it. ought to have borne. There was now a cavity between the outer casing and the rubble interior of anything from a hair'sbreadth to a width of three feet. This was merely disintegrated masonry, and filling up the crack would not bring back the strength of the buttresses, and nothing could do it. but rebuilding, or something equally drastic. Now the stresses were in the position that Wren did his utmost to prevent, coming simply down the front edge of the piers. That was the whole secret of the imminent danger to St. Paul's. It was unfortunately the fact that they could not mend this stonework in any way that would get the stresses back to the position where Wren put them. He believed in grouting, but his objection to its use in St_ Paul's was that it would be ineffective, because it could not possibly get the stresses baek to their original position. The front edge of the piers was now carrying at least 50 tons to the square foot. The maximum safe load for solid Portland stone, properly built and of the best quality, was 17 tons to the square foot. Consequently, the front of the piers was carrying stresses which, if carried properly, would need piers of three times the strength in solid Portland stone masonry. If they spent £200,000 on repairs and making the piers as strong as they possibly could by injecting grouting and inserting rods, or by any of the other methods proposed, they would never get the stresses back again into Wren's position. Lowering the Dome. Mr Todd says they cannot take the dome down because they could never put Wren's dome back again, and a" the sentiment and glamour of the Cathedral would disappear. But they could build tho dome up in its present position by temporary structures, take down and mnike good the piers, remove the temporary support, and gently lower the dome bodily l-3COOth part or an inch, which represents a thin line drawn by a very fine pen on paper. If this were done as he recommends, SiPaul's. would endure for a thousand years, but the only possible way of success was to start at tho centre. The foundations of the piers only ©o 4ft 6in into the ground, which was .first a stratum of a weak form of brick earth; following that they got gravel, then what Sir Francis Fox declared to be quicksand, and then the London clay, which wfts absolutely safe stuff, and if they could get St. Paul's down to that level they would be truly safe. Mr Todd gave details of his echenio, which he considers would cost £2,000,000 and take twelve years to carry out. He did not wish to" say one word in detraction, but he really believed that a scheme for £200,000 was Absolutely useless. If there was any sense or wisrdoir. in what he had said he hoped that it would be shouted into the eare of every Englishman on tho earth. Lord Mayor's Reassurance. Speaking at a Livery dinner in the Oity, the Lord Mayor said that it Wias perfectly true that Mr Todd inspected the building to a certain oxtent, but lie had not spent three years there as the Dean and Chapter and their experts had. The experts were Mr Basil Mott—engineer to build tit. Paul's Bridge, if tho Corporation built it, as he thought they would —and also the engineer of the Tube system; Mr Humphreys, the engineer to the London County Council; Mr Trench, the engineer to the Midland Railway; Sir Aston Webb; and Mr Macartney, the architect to St. Paul's. These gentlemen had been studying the dome and the piers for about three 1 years and had done it very scientifically with the most perfect instruments ever invented to find out any movement of the piars. There was one frViinfr they were all agreed upon —that the foundations of St. Paul's from the crypt to the floor of the Catl edral were perfectly sound, and they aaid that they had never moved since "Wren put them in. It was said, first of all, that the money could not possibly be raised, and that the Corporation would have to come in, or 'else the Govern-; ment, and now it was to he £2,000,000. The matter had been referred to a Special Committee of the Corporation, who liad heard the District Surveyor's statement. . Although Mr Todd served the notice perfectly correctly and had his views, the Committee had only heard one side. They would Fhortly hear the opinions of the experts, and would bring up their report to the Court of Common Council He did not think that there would be any danger to people who might be afraid of going into or walking by St. Paul's for fear that the dome would fall on them.

The District Surveyor would have been wanting in his duty if he had waited for the building to collapse, but Mr Todd did not suggest that it was going to collapse to-morrow morning, next week, or next year. It was his daity to stop anything like-an accident.