I propose now to examine the three conditions which, as I have said, are assumed in the scheme of the trustees, and I shall endeavour to show that one of them is unfounded, and that two of them are mutually inconsistent.
Of the necessity for an improvement in the arrangements of the church no one can be more thoroughly convinced than myself. In spite of the care with which the services have been for many years conducted, the attendance at our Parish Church has always been a duty rather than a pleasure. The inconvenience of the principal entrances to the church, placed as they are close to the very communion rails; the extreme difficulty of kneeling in the high and narrow pews in which seat-holders are now impounded; the position of the choir in the western gallery, in rear, instead of in face, of the congregation; the lofty reading desk, from which the prayers seem to be preached rather than prayed; the cramped space about the holy table by which the celebration of the Communion is rendered most inconvenient; the galleries which disfigure the interior, and destroy the sense of the oneness of the whole congregation; these and other defects are too obvious to need enforcing here. The Trustees have wisely recognised their existence and their scheme is a proposal to remove them. In this every member of the congregation will heartily support them.
It is to the second point involved in their proposals that I wish to draw the attention of the parishioners—the assumed dangerous condition of the Tower.
The Tower was erected with the church about a century and a quarter ago, and is not only of very good proportions but is remarkably well built. There is not a symptom of failure in it from top to bottom. Careful and repeated examinations of it have convinced me that it is as sound as a bell throughout, and that at the present time it is in every respect in as good condition as when it was first completed. Any person who takes the trouble to examine the building may see for himself that the cracks, which appear in the eastern part of the church, are not in the Tower itself, but only in the walls that abut upon it. They are simply the result of the greater weight of the Tower, which has caused it to subside to a certain extent, and so to crack the walls of the church, and of the staircases, which being lighter, have undergone no settlement.
The Tower has settled, but it has done so in one block. No better proof could be given of the excellent workmanship and capital condition of the tower, than the fact that its subsidence has caused no fracture whatever, in the fabric of the tower itself. The settlement is due to an exceptional cause, the decay of the planking on which its foundation are laid, but every old tower in the country has undergone similar movement from analogous causes. These movements may not be so obvious to the unprofessional eye because, having generally occurred within a century or so of the erection of the towers, the cracks which they caused have long since been made good. Subsidences of this kind come to an end after a certain time, the foundations take a solid bearing and no further movement from this cause can then arise. The great tower of St. Nicholas church in Hamburg, upon the erection of which my father has been engaged for twenty years, though it is not yet completed, and though it stands upon one of the finest masses of concrete ever put in, has already subsided more than six inches. Our Hampstead tower has gone down something less than three inches. I need scarcely say that it is not proposed to pull down the tower of St. Nicholas on account of its six inches subsidence. Why then should our Hampstead church be condemned.
The Tower is of excellent proportion and outline. It is a very interesting and characteristic example of its date, and forms with the adjacent buildings in Church Row an almost unique group of 18th century architecture, of the greatest interest not only to the architect and the artist, but also to every person of taste and discrimination. No reason exists for its removal which would not condemn to destruction half the old churches in the country. To pull it down would be an act of needless vandalism. It is associated with the earliest recollections of those who, like myself, have known Hampstead from their childhood, and it is the one public building of any antiquity which our township possesses. To do away with it is to destroy a piece of good work which, if left to itself, will endure for centuries, and to incur the perfectly needless and heavy expense of erecting a new tower.
The cause of the settlement of the Tower is, as I have stated, the decay of the timber planking upon which its foundations are laid. This has taken place to a greater extent upon the west side than upon the east. The consequence of this has been to give the Tower a slight inclination westward. In 1868, Mr. Hesketh and my father were instructed by the Trustees to examine the foundations. They found that the planking had entirely perished upon the western side, and that the foundations in this part rested upon the natural soil, which is a compact loam. Upon the eastern side a thickness of 2½ inches of planking still remained, only partially decayed. The report which the architects made at that time stated, that it was probable that the planking under the eastern side would gradually perish, and that as this took place the Tower would settle down upon the eastern side until it rested upon the loam. The perpendicular position would thus be gradually restored, and no further movement would then occur. I have recently plumbed the Tower myself, and I find that this conjecture is borne out by the result of my measurements. The inclination of the Tower westward has decreased from seven inches in 1868 to from four to five inches at the present time, thus affording a proof of the soundness of the conclusion arrived at by Mr. Heskett and my father six years ago. I give in a tabular form the results of the observations made upon the Tower at different dates, by which it will be seen that the inclination of the Tower has decreased steadily since 1829. [7]
| 1829 | 1861 | 1864 | 1866 | 1868 | 1874 | |
| Inclination westward in height of 78 feet | 10″ | 6⅝″ | 7¼″ | 7¼″ | 7″ | 4¼″ to 5″ |
| Excess of subsidence on west side over that on east, causing the westward inclination | 2½″ | 1⅝″ | 1¾″ full | 1¾″ full | 1¾″ | 1⅛″ to 1¼″ |
It will appear from this that from 1¼″ to 1⅛″ thickness of planking remains still undecayed under the eastern foundations. At the present rate of movement, therefore, the decay will be complete in about six years time. The Tower will then have resumed its perpendicular position, and no further settlement need be anticipated. Even at the present time the inclination is less than the amount of the set-off of the Tower, without taking into account the spreading of the foundations. The top of the Tower, therefore, stands well within its base, and the apprehension of any sort of danger is absolutely unfounded.
There exists, therefore, no excuse whatever for destroying our Tower.