Diver Bill

Happy Easter, everyone!

Yesterday, I watched an awesome show on PBS. It's this BBC show called Cathedral, and the episode I saw was about Winchester Cathedral. The cathedral dates back to 1202, and is one of the largest in England. However, in the early 1900's, it was discovered that the foundation was waterlogged and the whole cathedral was at risk for collapse. Architects and engineers were brought in to figure out what to do, and they discovered that the entire cathedral had been built on a RAFT. That's right, the entire cathedral was built on top of a raft made out of tree trunks. The tree trunks had begun to rot, and thus the cathedral was cracking and warping. At the engineer's suggestion, workers attempted to pump the water out from under the cathedral so that they could get beneath it and build up a proper foundation. However, pumping disrupted the soil around it and had to be abandoned.

At that point, the engineer concluded that the cathedral could only be saved by bringing in a DIVER to build up a foundation from beneath. Diver William Walker was hired, and spent 6 years packing the foundation with bags of concrete. The cathedral was saved, and Walker was honoured with the title Member of the Royal Victorian Order.