SAFE AT LONG LAST

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1040, 2 August 1930, Page 26

SAFE AT LONG LAST

ST. PAUL’S CLEARED OF WORKMEN LONDON’S GREAT DOME St. Paul’s Cathedral has been reopened with solemn ceremony. A period of strain a little like that of a prolonged war has come to an end, writes Clair Price in the New York “Times.” The prize at stake has been the safety of the great dome that soars over London. It is a familiar dome, it embodies a majesty and a dignity so unchanging, it is intimately bound up with the life ot the metropolis, it has sheltered so many of the most deeplymoving episodes in the nation's life. For 17 years workmen within the cathedral have been strengthening the whole structure of the dome. Five years ago the city authorities frightened London by unexpectedly pronouncing the cathedral a “dangerous structure,” and a panicky idea got about that the dome was actually on the point of crashing down. Since that- time the entire eastern half of the interior of the cathedral, including the dome space, the choir, and the high altar, has been abandoned to the workmen. Everybody else has been shut out by a tall curtain hung behind a temporary altar at the head of the nave and by wooden barriers erected across the aisles. Behind the folds of that concealing curtain the workmen, directed by a commission of the ablest architects in London, have been employed on the whole structure of the deserted dome from the floor of the crypt all the way up to the golden cross, which rises more than 360 ft above the street level. It was not until five years ago that all eight of the massive piers which support the dome were found to consist of mere rubble contained by skins of crumbling stone. Alarming though it sounds, this

condition has at no time been an t actually dangerous one. It has only ] been “in danger of becoming dangerous.” But the responsibility for elim- ( inating a mere possibility of danger j from London's great dome —as serious a repair as has ever been found iu one of the world’s great cathedrals — has been so heavy that one foreman, unable to sleep from anxiety, has died under the prolonged strain. The story of repair is obviously a purely engineering story. The aim | throughout has been to strengthen the whole central structure of the , cathedral in order to enable the overstrained piers to stand up against the immense weight of the dome. There are in reality, three domes , which the piers have to carry—the ; inner dome, which one sees from the floor of the cathedral; the brick cone, ! which carries the lantern, the ball and the cross, and which cannot be seen either from inside or outside the j cathedral, and "the dome of St. j Paul’s,” which dominates the whole skyline of London. These three domes, coming down at their various angles, meet upon an enormous circu- j lar drum with walls four feet thick, which carries the weight of the domes themselves, of the massive timber and stone supports which keep the outer and inner domes to their true curves, and of the lantern, ball and cross, the last three a mere trifle of SOP tons. The drum, as seen from the out- i side, is surrounded by the stone gallery, and below the gallery is the ; peristyle. A second drum carries the j enormous weight of the peristyle and the stone gallery, and this drum, ■with all its own weight and all the | weight of what it carries, is added to the burden borne by the eight lofty ( arches which you see from the floor i of the cathedral. The total weight. 1 which thus bears down on the eight j arches and is passed on by them to j the eight tremendous piers, is some- j , thing like 40,000 tons. 17 Years of Work By far the largest part of the 17 ; years of work which has been spent ]

I in strengthening the dome ha* k,^ I devoted to the consolidation o{ rubble interiors of the eight ■a-*' I Flexible tubes, extending fromtH | cement-mixing machine on the flof* ! have been inserted through j round openings cut in the gjjz" skins of the piers, and through the.cement and water have been inject ■ | into the piers by compressed a? Rods of rustless steel have beeufa/ serted at the same time, so that *rh | the "grout'* has filled up the j cavities in the rubble within the Die! : the vt bole mass has hardened i solid reinforced monolith. A lesser task has been the fitth,,, ,of a great chain of rustless st«! i round the base of the outer dome » j about the level of the whispering gallery, in order to counter any bait, iu the curve of the dome. Wien fe. i self fitted a chain about the dom~ ; but it has corroded badly and hinow beeu reinforced by a chain «* rustless steel concreted into thj stonework.