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 Palace roofs, towers and rain water drainage system. When
these cast iron tiled roofs were installed on wrought iron structures in the mid 1800's
it was cutting edge technology built to last. But now, 160 years on the roofs are in fact
leaking, causing significant damage to the stone work, fabric and historic interiors
of the building. The Palace has some of the most valuable Victorian interiors in the country,
if nothing is done about repairing the roofs, there is a risk of severe damage, if not total
loss to some of these interiors. This now needs to be addressed urgently. So a phased
programme of roof repairs and replacement is already underway, to ensure the building
is water tight before any major restoration and renewal work inside begins.
Adam Watrobski>> It's now come to the stage where it needs major attention and if you
just look behind me you can see where there's been water ingress, you can see the results
of rust and salts, the capillary attraction where the mastic has gone in between the trusses,
you can see that temporary spaces have had to be put in to ensure that the roof tiles
don't actually fall apart, this is the back end of the gutter and you can see especially
along the top of the gutter flashing here, where there's been water ingress and there's
severe rusting.
Gradually these things are taking hold, water ingress is increasing and bits of it are quite
literally falling off. Repairing the roofs is a major logistical undertaking, there's
a huge amount of scaffolding that has to be put up in order to erect a gantry of sufficient
strength to move the tiles. This whole procedure is quite noisy and we're limited to the
noisy works when the Houses are not sitting. Each of these as you can see is very large,
it's 750 square, about 15 millimetres thick, each one weighs 75 kilos, has to be gently
lowered to the ground to be basically sand blasted, assessed for condition and at that
point we find out just what needs to be done to them. Some tiles cannot be rescued and
we simply have to re-cast them and the technology of casting a cast iron slab that thin is quite
complex.
This is the result of phase one, where it's been completely refurbished and it looks absolutely
fantastic, exactly as it should be and probably even better than it did in the beginning.
We have also managed to rationalise the fire escapes across the roof and the access to
it. After all this work we think it will last well in excess of 100 years.
We're now about to start phase two of the cast iron roof works, which will go on for
several years yet, we think another 8 or 10 years.
Narrator>> Cloister Court, hidden in the centre of the building is one of London's lost
sites and one of the few surviving parts of the old Palace, originating from the 14th
century. A lot of work needs to be done here.
Adam Watrobski>> This particular roof is a replacement, it's a post Second World War
replacement. There was severe war damage to this and it's a concrete slab with mastic
asphalt on top of that and concrete tiles on top of that and this has turned out to
be practically impossible to maintain. There are plants growing out of the mastic asphalt
and when it springs a leak of course, the water runs underneath the concrete, underneath
the asphalt and drops in in all sorts of places and you can't actually trace where it's
coming from.
What ideally needs to happen is that this concrete slab is removed and we reinstate
the original double pitch slate roof in the middle, with wide gutters at the side and
that would enable us to ensure that it remains waterproof and to maintain it properly.
There are a number of towers gracing the silhouette of the Palace of Westminster, many of which
are made of cast iron and this is J Tower and you can see where we've had to put in
temporary bracing on the pinnacles on the corner, which have suffered from rust jacking
and were actually about to fall off. Each of these pinnacles weighs probably in excess
of 75 kilos and would cause a great deal of damage if it were to fall off.
Narrator>> Rain water runs along guttering, into hoppers and through down pipes. Most
of this cast iron system is from when the Palace was built. Some of the piping disappears
into stone work, to ensure the integrity of the architecture, but over the years it's
rusted and sprung hundreds of leaks, causing a multitude of problems to nearby windows
and interior stonework. Temporary repairs are being carried out to the guttering and
down pipes, but because of the decay of rust the only real solution is to replace them.
This is underway, but much of it is hard to access, meaning the rate of repair and replacement
is very slow.
However limited, this approach must continue until a longer term plan for the Palace's
restoration and renewal is agreed.
To find out more please watch the other videos in this series.