Narrator>> The Palace of Westminster is home to one of the busiest parliamentary institutions
in the world. Thousands of people work here and visit every day and millions of tourists
are drawn to its iconic splendour. Completed in the mid 1800's, many of the Palace's
features have never undergone major renovation. So what being done to tackle any problems,
not only to ensure the Palace continues to function as a working building, but also to
preserve its unique heritage for future generations? In this video we will look at the external
and internal stonework. Sand coloured limestone from Yorkshire was used to build the Palace
of Westminster, because it was ideal for elaborate carving. But owing to its inherent qualities,
combined with the effect of hurried delivery from the quarry and poor practice in some
of the workmanship, the stone decayed in the London atmosphere of the time and because
the city's air quality is still poor, albeit due to a different modern day pollution, this
decay and damage is still going on. Although these defects were visible as early as 1849,
before construction of the Palace was even completed, very little was done to prevent
its decline during the 19th century. Work was carried out in the 1980's on outward
facing elevations and in the 90's, to some internal courtyards. But there is still a
huge amount of essential work to be done. Tessa Blundy>> This is one of the inner courtyards
which didn't benefit from the conservation work carried out in the 80's and 90's
to the more public facing courtyards. It's had another 30 years of damage caused by sulphurous
pollution and the damage will escalate. You can see that from the days when there
was a lot of sulphur in the atmosphere, it's blackened. The longer this pollution is allowed
to stay there, the worse the damage gets and it's still eating into the face of the stone
now. This is a really good example of a build up
of this sulphurous pollution. Once we can get rid of this throughout the Palace of Westminster,
our stone will be safer. The problem we have with the stone is that it wasn't left to
case harden as stone should be when it comes from the quarry, in addition much of the stone
has been bed faced. Correctly it should be laid that way up, it should not be laid in
the other direction. So we have stone very susceptible to damage.
If you look higher up you can see where they've had to take off a couple of the coping stones
for safety reasons, because they became so precarious, somebody was going to get injured
and you can see the gargoyles up at the top there, they still carry a lot of carbon deposit
underneath them, there again this is eating away at the surface of the stone. If we don't
do something about these very soon, we will lose them altogether.
Adam Watrobski>> This is the east elevation of Westminster Hall, this is an area which
has never been cleaned or repaired and you can see quite clearly what's beginning to
happen here. As I brush my hand across it, the whole surface is coming off and this is
corrosion caused by the carbon deposits on the surface of the stone and the combination
of that and the rain and you can see further up here exactly where all the surface is delaminating
and if we don't actually treat this soon, large pieces of stone will start to fall off
and it becomes completely irreversible and in that situation we lose major parts of the
historical value and the heritage of the building itself.
Narrator>> The original linings to the Palace are Painswick stone from Gloucestershire and
Carn stone from France. They were both easy to work and ideal for carving into
the iconic images around the Palace. But today, much of it is dirty and suffering from wear
and tear or damage. Adam Watrobski>> We're in member's entrance,
which is a fantastically finely carved stone area and directly above this is a location
for a rather large toilet installation and you can see just above me here, there's
water staining on the stonework. The water is coming from pipes hidden away in the duct
work in the toilets, which of course are directly above this area. The water has to soak through
the rubble in the vaulting above me before it actually shows on the surface on the stonework.
Ultimately we're going to lose all this decorative stonework up here and you can see
it's extremely fine carved work, it's going to be very difficult to repair and certainly
we won't be able just to patch it in. The loss of this stonework of course has two repercussions,
one is of course as you can see the decorative nature of it, but the other point is that
the bits of stone will start to fall off and we've already had this problem in a number
of other areas in the Palace, where water penetration has caused salt migration and
pieces simply fall off. Narrator>> While longer term plans for the
restoration and renewal of the Palace are being considered, the programme of conservation
in repairs of the stonework at highest risk of irreversible damage and decay continues.
But much of the required work isn't being done, because it can't be accessed easily
and the disruption it would cause during sittings at Parliament.
To find out more please watch the other videos in this series.