The spiral stair to the Palm House gallery was closed for most of the summer while it was taken back to bare metal. Under nine coats of paint the treads turned out to carry the foundry mark of 1868, the same as the ribs of the house.
One tread, the twenty-third, was not iron at all. At some point a broken casting had been replaced with carved and painted oak, so well that nobody had noticed for decades.
Paint the colour it was
Paint scrapes showed the stair was first a pale stone colour, not white. We have matched it. The oak tread stays, now with a small brass plate underneath recording the repair.
Whoever carved that tread did it so well that it fooled everyone for sixty years.