During the works, Brodrick is reported as being "determined to see the scheme through 'whatever the cost'". Extracts from the log-book of the Clerk of Works, James Donaldson, surviving at West Yorkshire Archive Service, reveal Brodrick's insistence on the highest quality of work. Recurrent complaints include slow progress, poor workmanship, poor quality of stone, and insufficient through stones; Atack and Musgrave were more used to building mills than fine, large-scale public buildings. A January 1854 note from the diary records that Musgrave "objected to the dressing of so much of the face of the rubble walling generally and the expensive manner in which was required to execute the wall". In March 1855 "Mr Brodrick was so dissatisfied with the Rawdon Hill stone being used that he took a hammer and destroyed a cornice stone to prevent it being used".