Examination of Witnesses (Questions 7840
- 7859)
7840. Mr Garnier, are you going to read this
statement or not?
(Mr Garnier) Which would you prefer, my
Lord?
7841. Either we will keep up with you reading
it, or we will disregard it.
(Mr Garnier) It might be easier if I read
it through.
7842. From the point of view of getting it on
the record it would be helpful.
(Mr Garnier) Yes. So by its individual
character I mean its characteristic style, its Rococo interior
decoration, which is agreed is "easily the finest in Soho"
[Pevsner]. The Survey of London tentatively attributed
its design to Sir Robert Taylor. This decoration is contained
within an exterior structural shell some 10 years earlier than
its interior fitting up. The house's suite of Rococo rooms is
now the most extensive remaining and largely unaltered Rococo
scheme in any building in London. It is also the Rococo scheme
of the highest surviving quality in London. These Rococo schemes
occur primarily in Soho, the Harley (now Howard de Walden) estate
in Marylebone, and the Grosvenor estate and its neighbours in
Mayfair. No other house in London has so many Rococo rooms in
such original untouched condition, and you can see that from my
Table B in the Appendix. That shows that the House of St Barnabas
has five or six rooms of Rococo character, including the staircase,
whereas my study of the statutory listing schedules for London
shows that next down the scale there are two Grade II* houses
with three Rococo rooms, the remaining houses with Rococo decoration
are Grade II and confined to two rooms (as in about six houses)
or only one room (as in about 25 houses). Pevsner compares the
house's Rococo decoration with the slightly earlier Rococo plasterwork
at the Mansion House.
7843. The house is comparatively well-documented
as to when it was executed and for whom: in 1755-57 for Richard
Beckford, a brother of the then Sheriff and later twice Lord Mayor
of London, Alderman, William Beckford. That gives the house additional
associative historical significance, as the Beckford family are
of national significance.
7844. It can now be suggested who the craftsmen
plasterers were, for the decoration has strong similarities with
that at Powderham Castle in Devon, dating to 1754-56, where the
London men John Jenkins, William Brown and Stephen Coney are documented
as working. The way these two commissions relate to each other
is important as showing a consistent designer at two such far-flung
locations—one metropolitan, the other deep in the West Country—also
showing the spread out of the capital of what is essentially a
metropolitan haut-bourgeois style.
7845. My researches into the decoration at the
House of St Barnabas have by now strengthened the Survey of
London's former tentative attribution to Sir Robert Taylor
into a very firm attribution. I shall be publishing this at a
lecture I shall deliver to the Soane Museum Study Group here in
London later this year. He is a highly important historical architect,
appointed architect to the Bank of England and was the most successful
British architect ever to that date. He died worth £180,000
in 1788, a sum if translated into modern values that would propel
him well into the Rich 100 list and showing how in his day he
was vastly more successful than his now infinitely more famous
contemporary, Robert Adam. Despite this success in his own day,
there are far fewer commissions known by him than by any of his
contemporaries of equal standing. The House of St Barnabas as
a firmly attributable work by Taylor gains even greater significance
than previous studies might suggest, or its listing description
might suppose.
7846. The foregoing will set in context the
dangers the house potentially faces as showing the significance
of its extensive, exceptionally high quality and now exceptionally
rare Rococo interior decoration by a nationally important architect
and by a team of potentially identifiable craftsmen, at a documented
date for an identifiable patron. The loss of any part of these
Rococo decorations would be a major impoverishment of the national
built heritage. It will next be shown that such a loss is not
impossible, considering the potential ground-movement indicated
in the published reports.
7847. Moving on to quality and quantity of plasterwork,
Phase 3 Iteration 1 Survey has been available to all parties.[16]
This, as in the prior Alan Baxter Assessment of Settlement
Impacts on the Built Heritage, concentrates on the structural
envelope of the house, the shell, and effectively plays down the
interior.
7848. CHAIRMAN: Mr Garnier, we did go
into the question of interiors at an earlier occasion, so we are
aware that this is a point.
(Mr Garnier) Very good.
7849. Go on, though. Do not be put off.
(Mr Garnier) Thank you.
7850. It cites under the general heading "Interior",
the "richly stuccoed wall panels and ceiling" (the latter
in the singular), then itemises only two of the three such richly
modelled ceilings on the first floor and also omits one elaborately
treated room on the ground floor. This is unfortunate at least
as degrading the extent of the fine interiors; indeed, were the
house with its plain exterior only to have interiors commensurate
with the iteration schedule it would justify perhaps no more than
a Grade II* statutory listing. The omission in the iteration survey
of one richly modelled ceiling and scant mention of the extent
of the plaster wall decoration gives the impression of a much
less extensive scheme than exists. By my estimation, greater area
of heavy plasterwork equals, on the crudest of computations, greater
risk of damage caused by movement in the structure, and the significance
of any such loss would be proportionally all the greater for reducing
the integrity of the most extensive surviving untouched scheme
of Rococo plasterwork decoration in London, in a worst case scenario
potentially destroying that particular cachet by making it no
longer the most extensive scheme. Comparison with the agreed irreplaceable
nature of St Dunstan's Church, Stepney, must be made here.
7851. Concerning the vulnerability of the plasterwork,
whilst the wall decoration is rich and of high quality, it is
less vulnerable than decorative ceiling plasterwork which features
so strongly at the house. Modelled ceilings such as those at the
house are much heavier than a flat-bed ceiling as in the majority
of listed buildings on the Crossrail route. Plaster ceilings of
this date are in suspension, held in place by "keys"
of originally wet plaster forced between the laths nailed to the
ceiling joists and drying like curled fingers over the top of
the laths. Failure and collapse can occur from four principal
causes. First, water penetration, the consequent greater weight
of the plaster or degradation of its tensile properties resulting
in failure of the keys; second, degradation of the tensile strength
of the laths through wood rot or woodworm rendering them incapable
of bearing the load; third, failure of the nails holding the laths
to the joists causing them to part from the joists; and fourth,
structural movement in the building causing either fracture of
the keys or damage to the laths and their fixings.
7852. The extra-heavy nature of the suspended
plaster of these modelled ceilings makes them much more susceptible
to failure in relation to any projected scale of movement than
a flat-bed ceiling.
7853. It is accepted in the Alan Baxter report,
Assessment of Settlement Impacts on the Built Heritage,
section 3, paragraph 3.1, page 11, that the majority of previously-occurring
settlement in such 18th century houses as 1 Greek Street normally
occurred in the first ten years after construction. The fact that
the plasterwork here dates from ten years after the shell was
built means it was applied to a carcass that had likely as not
already settled. The plasterwork of this house may therefore be
more rigid than in an initially fully fitted-up house in which
the plaster was subjected to movement and loosened as the structure
first settled, but while the keys, laths and nails were still
strong and not brittle through age. This potential residual rigidity
cum brittleness of the plasterwork at the House of St Barnabas
in turn makes it potentially more vulnerable to any new movement
as may be caused by the Crossrail tunnelling etc., particularly
if that movement causes twisting of the fabric, the form of movement
that is most injurious to plasterwork. The settlement analysis
summary for the building as shown in the Phase 3 Iteration 1 survey
indicates that the "Dominant mode of deformation is bending"
(page 1207).
7854. LORD JAMES OF BLACKHEATH: Mr Garnier,
are the nails copper or iron?
(Mr Garnier)
Iron. Not only are they iron but they were knocked through green
timber, with the laths, and they were then subjected to huge amounts
of water because they had wet plaster applied directly to the
laths.
7855. So there would have been a continuing
chemical reaction?
(Mr Garnier) Exactly, yes. Nails of that
sort are always suffering from some degree of rust and degradation,
so their ability to hold the laths and the plaster in place underneath
the joist is reduced from that.
7856. LORD JAMES OF BLACKHEATH: Thank
you.
7857. LORD BROOKE OF ALVERTHORPE: If
I heard correctly, a bomb dropped nearby on the Chapel in the
war?
(Mr Garnier) I do not know if it hit it,
but there was bomb damage in the area, yes.
7858. Was there any bomb damage on this building?
(Mr Garnier) Not that I am aware of. Whether
the windows were blown out I do not know, but I do not think any
plastered ceilings came down.
7859. So we are not sure?
(Mr Garnier) No.
16 Crossrail Ref: P53, House of St. Barnanbas, 1 Greek
Street-Historic Building & Features-Phase 3 Stage 1 Iteration
Reports (WESTCC-36_05-001) Back
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