WINE CELLAR OF HENRY VIII IS BEING MOVED

Wanganui Chronicle, 7 January 1949, Page 7

WINE CELLAR OF HENRY VIII IS BEING MOVED

(By Astley Hawkins, Reuter’s Correspondent).

LONDON (By Airmail). —A wine cellar used by King Henry VIII, 400 years ago, on the site of modern Whitehall, is being moved bodily in an unprecedented engineering feat, to make room for London’s largest Government building now under construction. The cellar, 70 feet long, 30 feet wide and 750 tons fh weight, is a relic of the historic Whitehall Palace, once the largest royal residence in Europe. It has to be shifted 30 feet sideways and sunk another 15 feet into the ground to clear the frontage of a 10-storey skyscraper, due for partial completion in 1951, which is to house the Board of Trade and the Air Ministry. Government engineers are going to great expense and technical trouble to move the cellar because of its historic interest and a pledge of preservation given to the British Parliament by the Ministry of Works responsible for the new building. Surveying the site for the new structure which will overlook the River Thames, Scotland Yard and other notable London landmarks, architects stumbled upon the cellar while planning their excavations. It projects somewhat above the ground. After many consultations it was agreed that it must be moved—not brick by brick, but in one piece—■ backwards and downwards to put it well out oF the way of the foundations of the new building. The task is something new to British building engineers. So far as it is known, such a thing has never before been attempted in London. It means bracing the whole cellar building with concrete and steel girders and struts. Mammoth jacks will be used to edge it slowly on steel rollers from its present site to a more submerged position excavated for it nearby. Moving inches at a time, the whole process, may take two months to complete. Despite the urgent need for the quick completion of the new building to ease overcrowded government offices in postwar London, officials prefer to spend weeks in time and labour to save the old cellar in this way instead of moving it right out of its traditional setting. Sentimental Londoners, archaeologists and historians are satisfied that everything possible is being done to save what remains of a scene identified with some of the greatest passages in England’s past. PART OF “GOLDEN AGE” The Old Palace of Whitehall, which in Tudor days covered the site of the present new building, was part of the “Golden Age” of Britain before it was destroyed in 1698 by a fire which started from a charcoal burner used by a Dutch laundress to dry a shirt. Tenants of the Royal residence, a four-square lay-out with a large central court and various smaller ones, included Henry VIII Queen Elizabeth, Charles I, Cromwell, Charles 11, William II and James 11. It was from a window of the Palace’s banqueting house, which survives today as a museum facint the modern thoroughfare of Whitehall, that King Charles I stepped on to a scaffold for his execution. The Palace was the scene of tournaments masques and mummeries in the great Elizabethan days, when the Royal wine cellar, which is now being so carefully preserved complete with its brick benches and magnificent arched roof, was the storehouse of the best vintages supplied for lavish banquets. Before Henry VIII acquired Whitehall Palace it was in the possession of Cardinal Wolsey, under whom it was known as York Place. From the 13th to the 16th centuries the property belonged to the See of York. Cardinal Wolsey was the last of a succession of Archbishops of York who lived on the site for three centuries. \ Excavations for K today’s new government building constantly bring to light fragments of the past. These so far have included old river walls which centuries ago held the nearby Thames to its course.

Plans for the new building, now in the skeleton girder stage of construction, were originally laid in 1912; but two world wars and various other reasons delayed work until recently. It narrowly escaped postponement again a year ago when capital expenditure cuts were made in government building to save steel needed for export. As four-fifths of the steel work on the Whitehall building had been done when the cuts were ordered, the completion of the building was approved as an economy well worthwhile to bring scattered government offices together. When the whole building is ready it is hoped to accommodate four other government departments in it as well as the Board of Trade and the Air Ministry. The plans provide for accommodation for 6,000 government employees. Deferred schemes for further large government office buildings in London include the building of a “second Whitehall” along the South bank of the Thames near Waterloo Bridge. The construction of a new Colonial Office on the site of the old Westminster Hospital on Parliament Square opposite to Westminster Abbey and of new Houses of Parliament have been postponed indefinitely.