Tower and Town, November 2024 (view the full edition)Maintaining The Town HallMarlborough has a beautiful and impressive Town Hall. Whenever I take visitors into the Assembly Room they are wowed by its splendour. However, maintaining such an elaborate a building requires constant vigilance by The Town Council. One of the biggest problems in common with many similar large public buildings concerns pigeons. Protected species they may be, but they are still a pest. Many measures to combat these beasts have been tried over the years including netting, spikes, gels and even electronic scarers but the pigeons always seem to find somewhere out of reach to perch. Their offerings fall into the gutters and provide the perfect growing medium for the seed which they have ingested causing a lot of plant growth in the gutters which has to be regularly cleared out. Access to the gutters to do this is a problem in itself requiring the use of a 'cherry picker' vehicle which is difficult to position without causing disruption on the roads. Some of you may remember when the road closure for The Mop Fair was extended to include Sunday morning providing an opportunity for a cherry picker to be positioned anywhere around the building and for the town councillors and council staff to participate in an annual clean of the gutters. I understand that bacon rolls were provided for everyone. Maybe this tradition could be revived!
The interior with its high ceilings and elaborate panelling requires constant cleaning and maintenance often needing a scaffold tower and a head for heights. This job is ably undertaken by Chris and Izzy the caretakers ensuring that the building continues to look good inside as well as out. Andrew Bumphrey |
Often due to the sheer height of the building, the constricted surroundings or the nature of the proposed work it is not possible to use a 'cherry picker' so scaffolding is required. On the north side of the building the narrow pavement means that any scaffolding here projects into the road requiring traffic lights or a one way system causing traffic congestion. Obtaining permission and installing this traffic management is a time consuming and expensive process. The recent installation of new boilers required access to a chimney at the rear of the building. Erecting scaffolding at the front of the building with a walkway over the dormer windows (see picture) proved to be a cheaper quicker and less disruptive option.