OT. Daft question - ground level.

[geoff]

Handymen chucking their crap out of the window instead of disposing in a responsible fashion

[Nightjar]

On 18/11/2012 18:22, Sam Plusnet wrote: ...

Large stone buildings that do sink don't normally sink evenly, so you get leaning towers and bits falling off when they do.

Colin Bignell

[polygonum]

A classic example of such sinking is Winchester Cathedral. It was built on a 'footings' of large tree trunks across the wall. Underneath was (typically) 14 or 15 feet of marsh/mud, then a very firm gravel bed.

Over the centuries the wood deteriorated, the walls moved, many columns had great splits in them and the whole building nearly fell down. As Colin wrote, it was a bit haphazard. And I suspect that some of the buttresses by then were contributing to the problem - being added over the years, they were differently built and would sometimes have been tending to push parts of the walls down.

The diver William Walker spent years going under the building and placing concrete bags and blocks resulting in firm foundations.

And to further endorse Colin, the whole building did not sink six feet (or whatever) - it varied from one side to the other, one end to the other and within even small areas. In fact, as the ground around is almost level with the floor, it might not have sunk very much as a whole considering how heavy the walls, how long it has been there, and how unsuitable what it is built on.

[Nightjar]

Winchester was one of the cases I had in mind when making my comments. Beauvais Cathedral currently has temporary timber supports to hold it up, while they try to decide how to deal with problems it has. There is also a quite well known leaning tower in Pisa and several less well known ones in Venice.

Colin Bignell

[newshound]

Went to a splendid talk about "fasteners" by a man from GKN in the early

70's. He described a job where he had been asked to specify fasteners that were

stainless...........................yes, can do that could take "x" tons.................yes can do that can pass through a 2 inch hole......yes can do that

and need to be 60 feet long.

These were the bolts to go across the tower at York Minster, made out of standard lengths of 1 inch stainless studding, about 20 feet long, coupled together with threaded sleeves.

That was another one where the four "corners" were sinking at different rates as the wooden Saxon foundations decayed.

[Java Jive]

The story I heard was that Winchester College, when building New Hall down by the water meadows, pumped out the water lowering the water table thereabouts, and that greatly accelerated the decay of the timbers under the Cathedral, thus creating a crisis.

Never been able to verify it though ...

IIRC, there's a plaque to the diver >

[Java Jive]

No, it's generations of chewing gum ...

[polygonum]

I vaguely remember some similar story re New Hall but have no idea if it has any truth to it.

There is a full over-lifesize bust of William Walker (the diver) - not much good at describing where but not inside the cathedral itself!

with the clay version of that for years and years... Sculpted by my step-father.

I think this might be (as it claims) a real photo of the full kit:

[fred]

There is a medieval church in Santiago de Compestela (in Spain) where the outside walls on either side of the church sank an equal amount leaving the central pillars either side of the nave leaning equally outwards.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

finished the cathedral job. Must have knocked lumps out of him.

[polygonum]

>>> Lived with the clay version of that for years and years... Sculpted by

I think it was the flu epidemic. From memory, I don't think he had a single day ill during the work.