STONES OF WESTMINSTER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 72, Issue 290, 6 December 1929, Page 12

STONES OF WESTMINSTER

A LONG REPAIR TASK TO OCCUPY FIFTEEN YEARS MILLION POUNDS TO BE SENT The repairing of the decay in the stone-work of the British Houses of Parliament is going on apace. It will take 15 years to finish the task, which will cost a million pounds. The work raises many interesting points. The iron cross-bars and spindles embedded in the stonework of the pinnacles, for instance, have expanded through oxidation. In some cases solid masses of masonry weighing several tons have been lifted an inch or more as a result of the corrosion and expansion of the iron, due to moisture finding its way into the joints.

A London journal says: il Whatever may be the cause, the trouble has to be met. All the wise men in the world have so far failed to find out a way of stopping the decay of stone. All we can do is to cut away the decayed portion of the Houses of Parliament and replace them with the stone chosen by experts. This is a sandstone from Darley Dale in Derbyshire which never turns a hair, so to speak, at anything that happens in the way of weather.

“The list of repairs is very lengthy. Big Ben’s tower, more than 300 ft high, is costing £75,000, and almost twice as much is being spent on the Victoria Tower. A very wise suggestion has been made to the fleet that on unimportant details as much work as possible shall be spared. The original and elaborate carvings of parts of the building which do not show from the ground are not to be renewed. The hundreds of stone-carved crowns which stood on the little pillars rising from the parapet have all perished except five, and have been reproduced in cast iron. ‘ * Many of the trimmings so dear to the Gothic building, the carved canopies of niches, quaint animals, gargoyles, cannot be renewed in their original forms except at still greater expense, but when the Office of Works has mended and quieted down all these decorations we shall probably not lose anything at all in the general effect. “The stoneyard for the masons is on the Speaker’s Green and in the Victoria Tower Garden, well out of the way of the Houses. All repairs are being done as quietly as possible, so that never during the fifteen years shall it be said that members cannot hear themselves speak. They may even, at moments whether they are lost in thought, hear that historic pin-drop.’’