ST PAUL’S IS IN GRAVE DANGER

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18046, 5 January 1927, Page 11

ST PAUL’S IS IN GRAVE DANGER

CRITIC ATTACKS DEAN INGE. ! (Special to the “ Star.”' ' LONDON. November 24. Further attention is drawn this week I> V a writer in the " Architects’ ourjnal ” to the dangers of delay in dealing with St Paul's. The writer. “ Astragal.” declares that ** the verbal subterfuge (of the authorities) such as ‘No further movements have been reported' would hardly r.v'se a smile. In the face of the needs of the Cathedral its fatuity is too patent. The grim liability is that the building itself may make the report. ’ The writer attacks Dean Inge in the following terms: The Dean’s repetition of his ridiculous accusation that warnings are ‘ all newspaper stunts, after he has had ample time and opportunity to learn that they are both friendly and sincere shows how little he is interested in his office as custodian. “ Though he does not yet seem to have realised the fact, he is engaged in a the forces of decay. Either he must become an efficient custodian before movements in the structure become recognisable by the public, or the control of the great national monument will naturally drift into other hands. “ That the Gloom}' Dean, wisely pessimistic in in most things, should be optimistic in his capacity as custodian of his Cathedral has been the subject of comment in an article in Truth. Mr William Harvey had already pointed out in ‘ The Preservation of St Paul’s Cathedral * how buildings fad through this ‘ irresistible temptation to an optimistic frame of mind, and the Dean seems bent on adding another example to prove him right. “To have remained impervious and indifferent to the warnings of a careful inquirer for nearly two years and then to affect to regard them as fictitious shows to what lengths this natural optimism of the custodian can go. Living in or about the Cathedral, which has been more or less continuous! v under repair during his tenure of office, the Dean, like any other man placed in a similar position, has become callous to the signs of continued decay, and unconsciously assumes that their very continuity is normal; a world-without-end affair. He fails to realise that the movement of the building in the last century is no just measure of its prospect of movement during the next. “ Tt is ignorance of the manner of a building’s decay, the slow adjustment followed by the sudden plunge, that keeps custodians comfortable and apathetic. When at the last St Paul’s crashes down upon its latest custodian, the tail-end of Sir Christopher Wren’s inscription will serve for his epitaph ; Pitted up on the monstrous heap of dust and rabble it would invite the reader who requires his monument to look about him ! ”