Houses of Parliament

I am woken by the alarm to discover that the wearing of heavy builders’ boots for five days in a row at Cannon Street and elsewhere, too, has set my wonky knee off! Still, it’s brilliantly sunny, and a friend’s post on Twitter last night has left me in no doubt there’s still plenty to do down at Westminster.

When I get there it appears that those not engaged in painstakingly recording the decorated masonry are measuring the scatters of masonry on the foreshore left by the bomb blast, and indeed the large repair to the wall where the hole was. As far as we can tell, the repair was effected by filling the hole with concrete mixed with pebbles.

The infill has been marked with regular lines so it resembles the smooth ashlar it is replacing, but as well as the superficial markings down the vertical, there is what appears to be a line of mortar along the first horizontal course which suggests the repair was effected in stages. So maybe these are large slabs of concrete which were lowered into place, rather than a straightforward infill? And someone else will have a different theory, that’s what I love about archaeology!

Still, at least it was an opportunity to get out ‘the fat red book’ (the MOLA site manual) and brush up those recording skills we learnt at FROG training. On my way to the Tube station, I took the opportunity to photograph (and even pace out) the bomb damage repair from the OTHER side in Victoria Tower gardens. It’s about 48 feet, in case you wanted to know. Somewhere there HAS to be a photograph of the big hole, so I’m going to scour the internet for it!

Tomorrow is our last day at Westminster. It’s been an amazing week, and I’m sure we’ll be back!