With the help of CWO\'s masons, the Lord Mayor of London, Alderman Robert Finch, symbolically pushed open the 2.4-ton oak gates of Temple Bar, one of the City of London\'s historic entrances, last month (November) at the conclusion of a 14-month project to return the structure to the City.

CWO, the Chichester stone and restoration specialists, had dismantled the Portland limestone structure designed by Sir Christopher Wren from its Hertfordshire home and rebuilt it stone by stone - with the occasional new piece of Portland Independent Whitbed from Albion Stone Quarries - in Paternoster Square.

The stone gateway was originally built between 1669 and 1672 to replace a wooden gate that marked the western boundary between the City of London and Westminster. The wooden gate burnt down in the Great Fire of 1666.

The stone gate was removed from London in 1878 because it was causing traffic congestion - albeit that it was horse-drawn traffic. It was dismantled and re-assembled at the entrance to Theobald\'s Park in Hertfordshire, the home of Sir Henry Meux, the brewer. It was supposed to be a temporary measure pending a new site being found for it within the City.

The Temple Bar Trust was established in 1976 with the intention of bringing the gate back to London. The redevelopment of Paternoster Square provided a site.

CWO\'s contract, worth just under £3million, involved dismantling the 2,700 stones of the 24m high x 14m long arch, replacing those that were too badly eroded (there were 80 of them, although the repaired arch also has 300 stone insert repairs), cleaning them and re-erecting them.

CWO\'s masons and carvers also restored, cleaned and repaired four historic statues that were returned to the gate. They represent Charles I, Charles II, James I and Queen Anne of Denmark.

The project got off to an inauspicious start when the masons discovered the gate had been rebuilt at Theobald\'s Park using hard cement. They had assumed the Victorians had used lime mortar, which is relatively soft and easy to remove. Dismantling the gate put the project 13 weeks behind schedule.

CWO had to work seven days a week on extended shifts to get the project back on schedule.

They encountered more problems when they came to rebuild the arch because they discovered the Victorians had not built it to level when they moved it. The courses were twisted and were out by 80mm from the north-west corner to the south-east. Again, CWO brought in more people and worked extra hours to cope with re-levellijng every course.

But in the end the project was not only finished on time, but also within budget.