Dover Town Hall Maison Dieu

Architectural Paint Research Part II Mayor’s Parlour, Upper Corridor & Lower corridor

Background & Brief

Further research has been commissioned within selected interiors of the Maison Dieu to establish the appearance of William Burges’ original polychrome decoration of 1883 and clarify the later development of the scheme. The three areas selected for further investigation are the Mayor’s Parlour, the Upper Corridor, and the Lower Corridor. They form part of the eastern Mayor’s Suite. There are no historic photographs of these areas and so the investigation of the decorative history is based on contemporary descriptions, early plans, the series of exposures of the applied decorations and additional cross-section paint analysis.

Various attempts have been made in the 1990s and more recently in 2019 to expose the pre-WWII schemes (1883 – 1940) by removing the later modern decoration applied since the 1950s. The findings have been rather inconclusive.