LONDON’S BANK

Hokitika Guardian, 18 November 1929, Page 8

LONDON’S BANK

IMPREGNABLE VAULTS. An army of men who have been working for years under the strictest oaths of sperecy 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 tunnellers will meet with' impenetrable barriers.

Engineers estimate it would take weeks of hard work with dynamite and oxyacetyleno torches even to damage the huge steel doors that lead to the vaults.

Some of the vaults are now finished and they embody the safe-builders’ niosu perfect designs and iTio most modern type of reinforced concrete and steel. Concrete walls seven feet thick run around the vaults. Inside the walls are steed grills bn it into slabs of concrete and passages where armed guards will patrol when the vaults are lull of bullion. The vault doors are solid steel, and weigh twelve tons each. And though they 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 he scores of alarms and bells, to shrill out a warning as soon as iinv intruder enters.

The hank lias its own water supply, electricity plant, ’an army of guardsmen. and in ease of attack by revolutionary forces, for example. could wiiht.sand soige indefinitely.