Mr. BENNI regret that the amount of time at our disposal is small, and that I am bound to occupy so much of it, but I 1203 think hon. Members will agree that the Vote for £10,000 put down for the restoration of the roof of Westminster Hall is a very important item, and deserves the consideration of the Committee at some length. The Committee is well aware that the roof we are going to restore is not the one which was originally built by William II. They are his walls, but the roof that was then put on was of another design, and nothing like so noble as the one we see now. It was supported by two rows of pillars. That roof lasted 400 years, down to the time of Richard II., and we now desire to make more glorious Westminster Hall, the chief public building in this country. Richard II. had the walls raised on both sides, and, with the assistance of his master carpenter, he designed the roof we now see. I am not going too far when I say that no less than 90 per cent. of the timber which we see in that roof to-day was put there by this man, Henry Yeveley. He was the great carpenter who designed it. This was absolutely the first time the hammer-beam principle was introduced in the construction of the roof, but there is no doubt that Hugh Herland, who was eighty years of age when he designed the new work, did introduce a new principle, and extended other principles which made the Westminster Hall roof one of the architectural glories of the world. There is no other wooden roof, save one erected recently in Russia, which has the same extensive span. The two towers which flanked the hall on the North side are the most interesting part of the building. It is the oldest inhabited part of Westminster Palace which remains. The north-west tower was occupied at various times by the King's relatives, and Margaret of Anjou and Henry IV.'s wife occupied it as an official residence.
Mr. BENNYes; I am going to deal with that point. The roof was completed between 1393 and 1402—a period of ten years, and from that time down to the restoration of King Charles we have no record of what repairs took place. There is no reason, indeed, to suppose that any very extensive repairs were made, because during that period the structure was at its prime. But shortly after the restoration of Charles II. some repairs took place, and 1204 again, in 1683, further repairs were undertaken. We know this, because, fortunately, we have at the Record Office the accounts of the Office of Works and of the First Commissioner, from 1660 to 1702, and again from 1778 down to the present time, so that we are able to get at something like an exact account of what was done in the meantime. The House may be interested to hear that, before the year 1660, there were dormer windows in the roof, probably on both sides, although, possibly, they formed no part of the original design of Hugh Herland. They were there before the Cromwellian period. In 1780 a Committee of the House sat to inquire into the condition of the, roof, and presented a very alarming report as to the state in which it was found; but nothing appears to have been done until the beginning of the nineteenth century. In 3 816, Sir John Soane undertook the first extensive repairs of the hall and roof. At that time, in the lower part of the two towers, were planted two coffee houses—Oliver's and the Exchequer—and there are still prints in this House showing the buildings. Sir John Soane removed these and restored the towers faithfully to their original design.
In 1834 Sir Robert Smirke, a well known architect, undertook a considerable amount of repairing, and removed from the hall a good many of the internal features. William Kent, another architect who had been responsible for the Law Courts which stood in a garden where the Cromwell statue now is, was also responsible for the wooden buildings which formed the Court of the Exchequer and the Court of King's Bench at the side. These Courts, which were constructed of wood, were removed, together with the booths and shops, at any time when great functions, such, as a Coronation feast, took place. From the time of Smirke nothing was done till Sir Charles Barry undertook the repairing of this Palace, and the House of Commons instructed him to examine the roof and make a full survey with a view to seeing what was the present condition. Sir Charles Barry removed from the east side-that is the side on which is the small courtyard called the "Star Chamber"—the buttresses which stood on that side and which were the work of the mason of Richard II., but he left the buttresses on the west side. Many hon. Members are, no doubt, aware that in the Private Bill Office on the other side of Westminster Hall, in the southwest 1205 corner of it, can be seen the buttresses across the west side of the wall. Sir Charles Barry removed those on the east side. Apparently he was not fully seized of the principles on which the hammer-beam roof was constructed, because he put in ties, shoes, and struts, and some of these ties are still visible. They apparently were put in under a false conception, and that is shown by the fact that some of them could be shaken by hand when we were inspecting the roof by means of the scaffold. He further put in struts, which are a great defacement to the roof.
8.0 P.M.
I hope I may be allowed to explain what we propose to do. Nothing was done from the time when Pearson removed the dormer windows on both sides in 1885. He reported that the roof was apparently in good condition. This could hardly have been the case; although the decay may not have been on the surface, it still was there. But nothing on a large scale was done. The practice of the Office of Works for many years was to employ two men, who had been sailors, to go up ladders, inspect the roof, and give their view as to what condition it was in. It was not to be expected that men with no architectural training would be able to give a technical opinion. However, the Ancient Monuments Branch of the Office of Works was responsible for a complete survey being undertaken last year. The practice of this House has been to vote a sum of £600 every year for the necessary repairs of the roof, and our architect, who controls the practical side of the Ancient Monuments Branch, a gentleman whose talents in this direction should be recognised with gratitude by this House, suggested that we should spend the money not in repairs but in hiring a scaffolding to enable a complete survey to be made. The scaffolding was hired and erected, and a complete survey was made. I doubt whether at any time there has been such a complete survey of this roof. Every joint was examined, every timber was sounded with a hammer, and a report was drawn out and will be presented to this House in due course. This examination showed that there were four causes of the present decay of the roof. The first was dry rot, the second surface decay, the third an insect—goat-moth—and fourthly, most important of all, there were very extensive ravages by a small grub called Xestobium tesscllatum. We caught some of these, and I shall be happy 1206 to exhibit them in the Tea Room. It has been responsible for very great damage to the timber. Of the 40,000 cubic feet of which the roof consists, I am afraid one must say that at least 30 per cent. has been destroyed. I do not suggest that the insect has consumed that vast quantity, but it has consumed sufficient to destroy, for all practical purposes, not only the old timber which was put in by Herland, but the new struts put in by Barry as well. Some of the chief members of the roof, the principal rafters, the wall-posts, the purlins, which go into the trusses in the bays between the hammer-beams, the hammer-beams themselves, and the baulks of wood put in by Barry only fifty years ago, have been extensively consumed by this little beast. As an instance of then-work—I may mention that they are in the larvæ state when they do this damage: We put some in a test-tube which was corked, and in four days they had succeeded in making their way to within one-eighth of an inch of the top of the cork. They had burrowed round and round but had not come out because, peculiarly enough, their instinct told them it was not the right season to come into the air, so instead of doing so they made very extensive spiral movements.
I want to tell the Committee what is the proposal of the First Commissioner for the repair of the roof. It is obvious that the conditions by which we work must ensure the stability of the roof. We must stop the decay, and we must have regard to the beauty and historical value of the roof. In stopping decay the first important condition is that of ventilation. No doubt a great deal of damage was done owing to defective ventilation. It is proposed to restore the old flares in place of the lantern as one of the most important means of dealing with ventilation. The reintroduction of dormer windows, although not decided upon, will be considered by the First Commissioner and his advisers. As to the insect itself, of course we shall have to destroy it, but destroy it subject to certain conditions. A committee of great experts is considering the question what poison is required to fulfil these conditions. Roughly, they are as follows: You must have some insecticide which will penetrate the wood and destroy the larvas; you must see that it does not make the wood too inflammable; and it must be something which has not a persistent and unpleasant smell, which is 1207 not of a gaseous nature, which might poison the workmen and other people in the hall, and it must be something which will not destroy the metal we shall have to introduce into the wood. Given all these conditions of the problem, we have a Committee of experts on the matter advising the First Commissioner, and I hope that before long they will come to some decision.
As to the strengthening of the roof, in order to ensure its stability there are two possible ways of going to work. First, you might follow the plan adopted by Barry, and take the existing members, in so far as they are good, piece them and support them with metal struts in their places, by making those members which are good do the amount of work which they are capable. The disadvantages of that course would be twofold. First of all, it would mean the removal of 70 per cent of the wood in the existing roof; secondly, it would mean the appearance of many steel plates and steel ties, which would be a severe disfigurement of the beauties of the roof. The plan we propose, and which I hope will commend itself to the Committee is as follows: We propose to place on William II.'s walls a steel structure which will in fact be a roof in itself. It will be strong enough to support its own weight, to support the weight of the roof, to resist the wind pressure, and also to support the weight of those timbers which are already in the roof and whose functions, therefore, really cease to have any necessary part in the structure. Perhaps hon. Members have seen the drawings placed in the Tea Room during the last few days. This steelwork will enable us to preserve all the timber, save about 35 per cent. We shall be able to save all the carved winged terminal figures at the end of the hammer-beams, and we shall be able to conceal the steelwork so that it will be far less visible even than the work put in by Barry. The collar beam—that is to say, the beam which ties the principal rafters across the head of the roof, is in two lengths of parallel pieces. The steelwork will be put up between them. The principal rafters will be supported by steelwork, which will be hidden between two sets of trusses between the strut and the beam. Except in the upper part of the roof, no steelwork will be visible, even if it were possible to see it in the light. Such steelwork as is introduced will be painted, and so far as possible, merged into the 1208 general colour of the wood, and I am of opinion that hon. Members will not know, unless they are told, of its existence.
We shall be enabled in this way to remove the offensive struts, both steel and wood, which were introduced by Barry, and to reveal fully to those in the hall the wonderful beauty of the design of the struts and the great arched rib put up in the time of Richard II. The hon. Member for East Clare (Mr. W. Redmond) asked me a question as to where the wood came from. There has been a great deal of dispute on this point, but we have established beyond the possibility of doubt that the timber is oak. The red appearance, which has given rise to the idea that it was chestnut, is due to the surface decay to which I have referred. It is decay not of an animal but of a vegetable kind, and it only affects the surface to the maximum of one-eighth of an inch, and it has done nothing to destroy the stability of these trusses. It gives that delightful red appearance which we shall make every effort to preserve. We have taken a micrograph—that is a magnified photograph—of the texture of the wood, which proves that it is certainly oak, and not chestnut. We have certain evidence in the bills preserved in the Record Office that it came from the King's Wood at Odiham, from St. Albans, and the wood at Kingston.
Mr. WILLIAM REDMONDIs there-no record that some of this wood came from Cratloe, in the county of Clare? It is well known in the county, and the history of the county itself states it.
Mr. BENNIt may be so. I can only give what evidence comes to our hands from the documents in our possession. It is proposed to remove the existing scaffolding put up for the purposes of inspection, and to erect a steel centre or scaffolding which will support the trusses which are under repair, and the bays. When that work is completed it will be removed to another pair of or three trusses, where further repair work will be undertaken. It is proposed to remove the flags from the floor of the Hall, because they themselves rest on walls and are not strong enough to support the weight of 280 tons which this steel centre, with their weight, will represent. In this Vote we take £10,000, which will enable us to erect the steel centre and commence preliminary work. We shall not put it out to contract, 1209 because it is essentially work of an experimental and tentative kind. We shall proceed with our own men. We think the work will probably extend over a period of six years. It will probably cost—although this is merely an estimate which cannot be of a definite kind—we think the work, in all, may cost £60,000. I feel sure that, although that is a large sum, the Committee will not consider it excessive. We hope to take this roof, which has covered the chief public building in England for 500 years, and to secure it from decay for all time. It is our first and greatest public building, and within its walls are enshrined the most thrilling and impressive memories of British history.
§ Mr. WHITEHOUSEI desire to raise one or two points in regard to matters generally included in this Vote, because this is the only opportunity of discussing them. Before proceeding to raise those points, perhaps I may be allowed to offer my congratulations to the hon. Gentleman for the very brilliant account he has given us in a very short time of the history of our greatest possession architecturally. It would be presumptuous on my part to express any opinion as to the measures he proposes to take for securing the safety of the roof, but we are well assured that he will be guided by expert advice, and we shall feel every confidence in leaving the matter in his hands and in the hands of the expert advisers of the First Commissioner. I desire to ask him a question with regard to the Victoria Tower Gardens. In those gardens there is at present being erected a considerable amount of masonry, upon which, we understand, it is proposed to erect a very beautiful and impressive piece of work, the "Burghers of Calais." Is my hon. Friend sure that the best site has been selected for this piece of sculpture? It will be within the recollection of the Committee that a year or two ago the First Commissioner gave an undertaking that he would not allow any statues or public memorials to be erected in the parts under his control, because he felt they were spaces available for the health and enjoyment of the public, and should not be encroached upon. I am well aware that he said a little time afterwards that he had assented to the erection of this piece of statuary, but if the decision that has been come to is not beyond question, I would ask my hon. Friend not to allow this group to be erected on the enormous pedestal which was indicated in the first model, because if that design 1210 is carried out it will be lifted to a distance of 18 or 20 feet, or even a greater height than that. I respectfully suggest that if this piece of sculpture is erected in the Victoria Tower Gardens at all, it should be placed on a level with the ground, so that it can be easily inspected by the public. I should have thought that a site near a museum—say, outside the Tate Gallery—would have been a very appropriate one, and would not have encroached upon the available space in Victoria Tower Gardens.
§ Mr. POLLOCKI desire to ask one or two questions about the roof, supplementing the hon. Gentleman's very interesting statement, upon which I am quite sure we will all wish to congratulate him. He has told us that the work will take some six years. I quite understand it must necessarily be a lengthy period, but I should like to know what steps will be taken during that time to ensure that decay does not continue. I understand that what he calls "the beast" is continuing its ravages at the present time, and, while the experts are sitting to consider how to kill it, the little beast is advancing. If the period during which the repair is to take place is one of six years, something will have to be done to ensure that the beast does not advance more quickly than the steps which will be taken to overcome it. At present those steps are in the rear o£ the beast, and do not get to the point at which it can be overtaken.
It being Quarter-past Eight, and there being Private Business set down by direction of the Chairman of Ways and Means, under Standing Order No. 8, further Proceeding was postponed.