My workplace is near a culvert, if I look on the map at 3 points where the water can be seen, it concerns me that these could easily meet right under the property.
I spoke to a local councilor and he reckons the culverts were never mapped, is it likely/possible that in the 1850's they'd have built properties directly over a watercourse?
I ask as I am toying with the idea of digging the basement floor a little deeper!
Found this, quite useful.
Quite possible, depending on the type and status of the property. Foundations for houses would have been negligible at that time.
In a budget job they'd probably have drained the privies into the watercourse.
Outside London, and unless there was a local Building Act or Improvement Act, most places would still be working to by-laws modelled on the 1667 London Building Act. The Public Health Act of 1875 and associated Model Bye-laws consolidated building control.
Owain
In message , R D S writes
I found a Victorian drain under a milking parlour I was remodelling. Soft red brick arch and about 2'0" wide. Curiously, the floor was rectangular pads of grey clay.
I think the answer is yes.
The problem is over years water courses can move get bigger or smaller depending on the drainage of nearby land and this is often why you get sinc holes appearing many years after a site is developed. I've even seen it around here where clay quarries have been filled with clinkers and concrete rafts put in to build but they do not last for ever and as I say, the condition they were designed to cope with can change remarkably fast.
Brian
Really you need to get a survey of some sort done. Not up to speed about these, but when they wanted to build a new hq for a major supermarket around here, they used ground penetrating radar. Brian
You need some dye and try to discover if they are interconnected and which way the water is flowing. Even the environment agency use special dye so that must be legal, as they used it here to try to isolate a sewer leaking into a watercourse earlier this year. Brian
Likely puddling clay as used to line canals
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