Work starts at Whitehall

WHITEHALL was once described as looking like a "white wedding cake", by Welsh/TT architect the late John Newel Lewis, but today looks simply like a brown sponge cake.

Work is under way at the historical building that is set to return to its role as Office of the Prime Minister. For now cream-coloured, the three-storey building has been fully outfitted at all three levels with scaffolding, itself supporting gang-planks. A fierce doberman in a cage greets visitors at the entrance.

Amid the scaffolding a metal staircase winds its way up the east side of the building from ground floor to top floor. Several men were seen at work when Newsday visited on yesterday, presumably working for the advertised contractor, Fides.

Three men loaded cut branches from a huge ancient tree onto a truck for disposal. A man used a garden hoe to mix cement in a wheelbarrow. Three others worked nearby. A worker was seen on the roof, while on the third floor a man tended to a pane of glass, while yet another scraped old paint off of an old wooden window shutter.

The site had shipping-container offices and was watched over by the ample security presence at next door’s Stollmeyer’s Castle.

The buildings paintwork was cream-coloured, not the usual white. In some places it looked reasonably well, while elsewhere the exterior walls had cement patchwork or mildew on the paint coat, all suggesting the need for a fresh paint-job.

At the front stood what topically looked like a Christopher Columbus statue but which turned out to be an Italian lamp boy in traditional garb. Also working to enhance the building’s appeal was an expensive-looking sign that proudly declared, “White Hall - Office of the Prime Minister.”

Udecott chairman Noel Garcia told Newsday, “Whitehall work is progressing, as you would have seen when you passed. We are still on target for April.” He said cream is not the building’s final colour which will be white.

“They are taking off the coats of paint they had and are applying a lime-render that has a creamy look, and will then paint the building white once again by about the middle of next month.

“You are seeing the application of lime render. We took off the coat of pain to do minor repairs to the masonry.” Asked about his previous reference to “some structural issues”, Garcia said minor repairs had been done to the south east of Whitehall.

Saying this damage was not at all due to the August 21 earthquake, Garcia explained that water on the site had caused some subsistence of Whitehall. “The building dropped by two or three inches and of course that would have caused the building to develop some cracks on that side.

“My information is that work has been done and that problem has been rectified. It was nothing to do with the earthquake.”