Page "Charles Barry" Paragraph 36

Before construction could commence the site had to be embanked, and the site cleared of the remains of the buildings and various sewers diverted.

On 1 September 1837 work started on building a 920 foot long coffer-dam to enclose the building site along the river.

The construction of the embankment started on New Year's Day 1839.

The first work consisted of the construction of a vast concrete-raft to serve as the buildings foundation, after the foundations had been dug by hand, 70, 000 cubic yards of concrete were laid, the site of the Victoria Tower was found to be of Quicksand, necessitating the use of piles.

The stone selected for the exterior of the building was quarried at Anston in Yorkshire, the core of the walls are of brick.

In order to make the building as fire-proof as possible wood was not used structurally, only decoratively.

Cast iron was used extensively, for example the roofs of the building consist are of cast iron girders covered by sheets of iron, cast iron beams were also used as joists to support the floors and extensively in the internal structures of both the clock tower and Victoria tower.

Barry and his engineer Alfred Meeson were responsible for designing scaffolding, hoists and cranes used in the construction, one of their most innovative developments was the scaffolding used to construct the three main towers.

For the central tower they designed an inner rotating scaffold, surrounded by timber centring to support the masonry vault of the Central Lobby, that spans 57 feet 2 inches, and an external timber tower, a portable steam engine was used to lift stone and brick to the upper parts of the tower.

When it came to build the Victoria and Clock towers it was decided to dispense with external scaffolding and lift building materials up through the towers by an internal scaffolding that traveled up the structure as it was built.

The scaffold and cranes being powered by steam engines.