ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 8 September 1928, Page 11

ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL

CONSIDERABLE progress has been made , recently with restoration work at St. Paul’s Cathedral and it has now reached

a stage at which it is possible to begin thinking of the end and even vaguely forecasting the length of time that will be required for the completion of the work, says “The London Times.” It is safe, at least, to hazard that this time two years hence St. Paul’s Cathedral will be itself again.

Last November the crypt was finished; and even more important than the finishing was the discovery that in two of the piers which had been grouted some time before the others the cement forced into them to solidify and reinforce the original rubble cores had answered all expectations and formed into a solid mass. Nothing then remained to be done in the crypt but to fill in the little round holes made for the purpose of inserting the cement; and this has now been so skilfully done that they are already scarcely perceptible, and in a year or two will probably be very hard to find. On the ground floor of the church the grouting of the vast piers that support the dome is now all but finished. Another three months should see the work completed. The piers will then not only be solid and compact for the first time in their history; they will have been rid, with very considerable trouble, of the treacherous old iron cramps inserted in the original building. These cramps, rusting away, contracting and swelling as the temperature changed, have been for nearly three centuries a source of weakness, and their removal and replacement by ties of special rust-resisting and temperature-resisting steel have been among the most important operations in the preservation of the Cathedral. The huge steel structures towering round each pier from floor to arch have now performed one of their duties; the piers no longer require the support which, during the grouting, they received from the mighty

timber struts built upon these great steel frames. But it is not just yet that the steel structures will be removed. They also sup-

RESTORATION WORK

END IN SIGHT

port the scaffolding; and on that scaffolding men are constantly at work filling in surface cracks, replacing defective stones with new stories, and carving such of them as are filling gaps broken in the old carvings. And more: the scaffolding is still necessary for a very important work that is destined to give security to the dome. There are to be altogether three sets of tie-bars of rust-resisting steel to link the inner drum to the outer. Two of these sets are horizontal, one at the level of the upper corridor, the other at the level of the Whispering Gallery. And now from beneath the Whispering Gallery the third set of 4in tie-bars, each nearly 40ft long, is being driven diagonally upwards and outwards to the outside of the outer drum. And next will come the fixing of the colossal steel hoop (invisible, of course, from outside the Cathedral) which, is to tie the whole together.

Suppose the work of preservation finished. There will still be a great deal of difficult, and delicate work of rehabilitation to be done. The western portion of the choir stalls must be taken back from their present position west of the temporary altar to their true position in the choir. And there is the rebuilding in its proper place of the organ. This must necessarily be a very long task, for, besides all the pipes and other components of a very huge organ, there are thousands of pieces of carving by Grinling Gibbons to be taken down, numbered, put together again and duly fastened. And then there will be tons and tons of dust and dirt to be taken away —a herculean labour in itself.

For all that, it may be said that the end is in sight. Very soon now, as it seems, St. Paul’s Churchyard will no longer thrum with the throbbing of the machine in that shed on the south side of the Cathedral. Only a few days ago a start was actually made at one particular spot in the ehoir with by no means the smallest part of the work still to be done—the removal of the large erections of steel and wood which the preservation has demanded.