Abstract
The construction of St Paul's Cathedral, from the laying of its foundation stone in 1675 to its declared completion in 1710, was the product of the vision and determination of Sir Christopher Wren. But the intervening years have seen the interior paintwork removed, leaving the stonework to become increasingly dirty. A superficial cleaning programme was carried out in the 1930s, but it failed to address the essential problem of the stained and soiled stonework. By the 1990s, concern arose about the dirty condition of the interior. None of the cleaning systems developed in the past twenty years is systematically used for large scale cleaning of interiors of historic buildings. A recent development in interior cleaning is the introduction of peelable poultices based on a specially formulated natural latex dispersion. This paper looks specifically at the conservation methods used for cleaning the interior of St Paul's Cathedral. The paper also focuses on the technical development of the basic poultice, Arte Mundit® type I, a custom formulated aqueous dispersion of natural rubber which is designed for application in historic buildings. The results of cleaning studies using this system on the interior of St Paul's are discussed in detail.
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