Sir Digby Wyatt's Work

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The minor details of Sir Digby Wyatt's work are equally remarkable for beauty arid appropriateness; not an inch of space is lost - not a chance of letting in light thrown away. The corridor adjoining the Foreign Office, for instance, has a glass ceiling decorated with ornamental iron gratings; groined vaults with a series of star-like openings admitting light, are introduced, wherever possible, and even the usually unsightly fire-hose are rendered ornamental by being coiled up like huge Catherine wheels in corner niches provided for their reception. In a word, all the features, whether great or small, have one common characteristic - that of freedom in subjection to law, which is the keynote of successful Renaissance architecture.

The drawings for this remarkable building cover some 1,500 sheets of paper of an average size of 2 ft. by 4 ft., every detail, however apparently insignificant, having been drawn full size by the indefatigable architect. Smith and Taylor were the contractors for the work, and it speaks well both for them and for their employer, that the bill of extras was one of the lowest ever known for a work of such magnitude.

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