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Windsor Castle
After the Annus Horribilis:
Structural Conservation and Monumental Disasters
Abstract
The first reaction after a disaster is one of despair. This hopelessness can lead to an irrational response and the unnecessary destruction of buildings or structures that have probably survived other similar catastrophes.
As conservation professionals it is our responsibility and privilege to bring to bear some creative thinking, and to bring some optimism where there is none.
This paper will seek to describe the steps that were taken after the great fire at Windsor Castle of November 20 1992 and after the earthquake in Cairo of October 12 1992.
It is generally accepted that good conservation means minimum intervention to ensure structural stability, and a retention of the maximum amount of historic fabric. As engineers we need to understand how a building has
historically transferred applied loads to the foundations. It is desirable that existing load paths should be maintained and that the surviving structure should be made to work. As the manifesto for the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings -
England's famous SPAB - says, "we are only trustees or guardians for those who come after us".
As conservation experts we are more like detectives in our quest to understand fully the problems confronting a distressed structure. It is important to understand what happened, what damage has been done and how the
structure has been altered.
This study may involve many modern non-destructive techniques to assess surviving structure. At Windsor this included the latest methods of materials testing, radar, ultra-sonics and dendrochronology. In Egypt there arc
several examples of buildings or structures wrongly assessed and where over-reaction or non-appreciation of hazards has led to an inappropriate response.
| Television transported around the world the images of the flames shooting high into the night sky as the north east corner of Windsor Castle burnt fiercely. 20 November 1992 was the Queen's 45th
wedding anniversary and was the final straw upon the back of a bad year. She described it as her 'annus horribilis'.
The fire at Windsor started in the chapel when a tungsten lamp came into contact with the back of one of the high curtains screening the altar in the chapel. The flames penetrated into the roof void above St George's
Hall and also explored the many hidden voids which were present in such a much-altered historic castle. Over the next 15 hours the fire had a devastating effect upon the medieval building, destroying over 105 rooms, 9 of them principal state rooms.
The fire was left to burn itself out but not without the firemen having poured 1 |
1/2 million gallons of water upon the flames at a rate of up to 4000 gallons per minute.
The effects upon the fabric of the building of the heat (over 10000°C) and the water, appeared to have caused irreparable damage.
The first part of the recovery had to be an assessment of what had survived. This was an operation fraught with danger. Whole floors were on the point of collapse. The four floors above the Green Drawing Room ceilings
in the Chester Tower had all collapsed on to the ceiling, making it a very dangerous space to enter. In the Brunswick Tower, the debris at principal floor level was 12 feet deep. This was all that remained of the upper four floors. Paradoxically, it
was this pile of debris that protected some of the finishes in the |
Octagon dining room, at the base of Brunswick Tower, from the very high temperatures achieved by the flames licking out of the top of Brunswick Tower.
The limestone bay window to the Crimson Drawing Room overlooking the East Terrace had been pushed out by the thermal expansion of the steel roof trusses. Firemen said that they could feel the bay move as they were
fighting the fire.
In the Prince of Wales Tower, partly rebuilt by Salvin after the fire of 1853, the situation was equally dangerous. Salvin's fireproof floor consisting of brick jack arches resting on flanged wrought iron beams had in
part been successful in resisting the fire. They had not collapsed but the wrought iron beams had expanded and increased in length pushing into |
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