DURHAM CASTLE

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 1 September 1928, Page 11

DURHAM CASTLE

St. Paul's Cathedral, Lincoln Cathedral and the Minster of York, Durham Castle has now-to be added as another magnificent ecclesiastical property in danger of collapse. St. PaiuPs, Lincoln and York have been taken care of. With constant, watching they should stand for centuries to come. But the danger of collapse, which was first no’tod at Durham, two years ago, has not been warded off. It has grown worse. The loose soil which overlies the solid rock of the Castle hill is slowly slipping beneath the castle's weight. The entire west wall is now found to bo in danger of sliding from its place and into the river far below. Within the last, few weeks the Bishop of Durham and the county authorities have asked for £150,000 with Which to begin work at once on the underprinning of the castle.

In the employment of a hill-site for the display of splendid arehi'tecturc, Durham is rivaled in England only by Lincoln, where'also cathedral and castle share a commanding site. Lincoln, however, falls short of Durham both in the outer majesty and in the history of its mighty group. The first sight of Durham is, indeed, one of the great experiences of English travel. Reside the cathedral, the symbol of the spiritual authority of the Bishops of Dur-' ham, stands the castle, the symbol of their . temporal authority. Nowhere else in England can the thinness of the line which decided spiritual front temporal authority in .medieval times be more vividly realised than in the sight of Durham’s cathedral and castle crowning the summit of their rivercireled hill.

Age and weather have, of course, lift their marks on the castle, but, it is the movement of the ground beneath it which, after 900 years of history, has now threatened it with disaster. The whole western side is in danger of collapsing and the north side pis beginning to be affected as well. Cracks have

IN DANGER OF COLLAPSE.

appeared and, are slowly widening in the circular staircase leading- to the roof near Tunstall’s ichapel on the north side. The walls '.are begining to split longitudinally as well as directly across, and it has become necessary to grout all the Walls and then to underpin them. The grouting has already begun, Util has had to be interrupted more than once for lack of funds, and it is now believed that the total expense of all the work .necessary will run up in the cud to somewhere between £150,000 and £200,000. It has always been supposed that, the western front was built oil solid rock, but investigation has shown that the walls are bedded upon a thin layer o'f broken freestone and below this there is a bed of marly sh'alc about twenty-eight feet deep on top of a fairly sound rock. The weight of the ■walls and buttresses, built almost on the verge of the steep bank, is crushing fill is wielding and uneont'a inert mass out Ward toward the river and, though the movement is at present, slow, no one can tell when it may be accelerated.

At present the great hall is used by the new University of Durham, and is hung with portraits of the teachers and scholars. The Bishop of Durham h'as his suite of rooms at the head of the staircase and one of the other suites in the vast old place is set apart as a lodging for judges on circuit. Its great hall was in existence before Chaucer’s pilgrims took their way to Canterbury and long before any of the present halls in Oxford and Cambridge wore built. For impressiveness its hail has no rival in England. The University which uses it is one of the youngest in the Kingdom. Darts of the castle have now had to be temporarily abandoned, owing to the aictute risk of their collapse. Impregnable as the mighty castle looks from a distance, time lias spared it no .more than it has spared fit. Paul's in London or the Mlinstor in York.