LONDON’S BANK

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XIX, Issue 281, 12 November 1929, Page 8

LONDON’S BANK

IMPREGNABLE VAULTS. An army of men who have been working for.years under the strictest oaths of secrecy are now completing the new vaults for the Bank of England (writes the London correspondent of the San Francisco “Chronicle.”). They have transformed them into a veritable fortress of steel and stone a £5,000,000 castle which will be able to defy any attack, even from the air. Bombs will be useless and underground tunnelers will meet with impenetrable barriers. Engineers estimate it would take weeks of hard work with dynamite and oxyacetylene torches even to damage the huge steel doors that lead to the vaults.

Some of the vaults are now finished? and they embody th safe-builders' most perfect designs, and the most modern type of reinforced concrete and steel. Concrete walls seven feet thick run around the vaults. Inside the walls are steel grilles built into slabs of concrete, and passages where armed guards will patrol when the vaults are full of bullion. The vault doors are solid steel, and weigh 12 tons each.

And though thev are so delicately balanced on their hinges that a child could swing them open, once they are locked they are strong enough to withstand the force of tons of dynamite.

Honeycombed in the maze of stone and steel will be scores of alarms and bells, to shrill out a warning as soon as any intruder enters.

The bank has its own water supplv electricity plant, and army of guardsmen, and in case of attack by revolutionary forces, for example, could with stand siege indefinitely.