鈥淚f they built St Paul’s Cathedral today it would only take 2 years instead of 200.鈥�
Now isn鈥檛 that a fascinating hypothesis? Before we go much further, we鈥檇 better have a look at the factors involved and, for now, we鈥檒l ignore the question of land. We鈥檒l just assume there is an available plot and that Detailed Planning Permission has been granted. So what factors do we need to have a look at? Finance is first, followed by material availability and ending with the availability of skilled labour.
Finance is no problem!
The original was built using money as it became available. Keeping it simple, this was mainly donations into the Church collection plate from the regular church-goers towards the end of their Services. Generally, they were very poor villagers who had barely two farthings to rub together, so cash came in slowly. That meant that work could only progress at a slow rate because the men working on the job had to be regularly remunerated.
Now for material availability:
St Paul’s Cathedral is built with Portland Stone. Portland Stone comes from the quarries on the little island of Portland, south of Weymouth. It has several quarries and the one which produced all the stone for the original St Paul’s Cathedral, , is still operating. Now bear in mind that the Dome of the Cathedral alone weighs 65,000 tons, it seems a bit optimistic that they could achieve the required output inside two years. Therefore we鈥檒l assume that most of the other quarries are going to become involved. All of them will need additional plant to quarry the stone and then cut it to the required shapes and sizes. Once they had the plant installed they would need to increase their manpower to operate it. Five year apprenticeships? – and they can鈥檛 all start on the same day! Best guess would have to be an absolute minimum of ten years to get all the materials to site!
Last on the list is skilled labour.
We鈥檝e already had a look at the guys that do the quarrying, but there another group who work there; the stonemasons. Have a look at the St Paul’s Cathedral and, inside and out, it is covered with carved stone! Now we did actually ask the quarries about this, but we got no reply! Obviously the question was too bizarre for them to waste their time, so we just have to guess again! Best guess here is that it will take 30 years to train the required number of stonemasons and another 20 years for them to produce all