Today in 1912, honors for William Walker, who saved the UK’s famous Winchester Cathedral from partial collapse through five years of foundation work… all of which he did underwater!
Builders started putting the cathedral together in 11th Century; it took until the 1400s to finish.
There was an expansion project in the 1200s on the east end of the cathedral, on very boggy land.
The workaround was to build the new space on a foundation of beech logs.
It’s probably not a surprise that around seven hundred years later, the logs weren’t quite able to shoulder the load anymore.
Fortunately by that time, there was a solution to the problem: replace the logs with a new foundation of cement and concrete blocks.
Except that the water table was so high there that carrying out the necessary repairs could actually make the situation worse.
The lead engineer eventually realized that when you’re faced with an underwater repair project, you call on a diver, and William Walker was considered one of the best of the time.
Workers dug out hundreds of trenches, and Walker went underwater in a roughly 200 pound diving suit, complete with a copper helmet and an air hose.
Shoring up support for the cathedral’s foundations was a huge job, especially for just one guy.
And it was work he was doing essentially in the dark, since there was so much sediment, light couldn’t get through.
But Walker kept at it for more than five years, though on the weekends he would often bike home, 70 miles away, and then return the following Monday.
The BBC reported it took over 25,000 bags of concrete, 115,000 concrete blocks and 900,000 bricks.
Walker’s work made it possible for crews to pump all the water out of the area without damaging the cathedral, and for conventional bricklayers could carry out repairs.
While it took a team to keep the Cathedral standing, it was Walker who caught the public’s imagination.
That included King George V, who publicly honored the man he said had “saved the cathedral with his own two hands.”
This week in Aroostook County, Maine, it’s the Maine Potato Blossom Festival.
The event started in the 1940s to celebrate northern Maine agriculture.
Today there are fireworks, parades, car shows, tractor pulls and mashed potato wrestling.
Or you could remain a spec-tater.
Saving the Cathedral (BBC)
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