Page:Walker (1888) The Severn Tunnel.djvu/181

108 adjoining this room, for building additional houses for the men; and on Monday morning, using to some extent the plans which had been prepared for enlarging the old room, we began a new and larger one. At ten o’clock the men commenced to dig the foundations. At one o’clock the masons started to build the walls. The electric light was put up to enable them to work night and day, and though frost interfered to some extent with the rapid progress of the work, a new mission-hall to seat 1,000 persons was completed on the 16th December, and opened for service on the 17th—less than three weeks from the time of the fire, so that the men were only kept two Sundays out of the room, and on these service was held in the large reading-room over the coffee-room, which was capable of holding 250 persons. A drawing is given of the new room.

Early in the year, the head-wall to the east of the Sea-Wall Shaft was removed, and the heading was commenced on the lowered gradient, going eastward from this shaft.

In order to work down to the lower gradient westwards from this shaft, small shafts were sunk, at intervals of about 60 yards, from the old heading to the new levels, and a small heading, 6 feet by 4 feet, was driven from shaft to shaft, till we by this means secured natural drainage for putting in the invert from Sea-Wall Shaft, westwards.

Break-ups were started through the whole length of the ‘Shoots,’ and the ground proving very good,