Page:Walker (1888) The Severn Tunnel.djvu/248

Rh crossed other fissures in the rock in which the water stood a foot or two higher than in the one tapped by the side-heading.

As a precautionary measure, before starting the pumps at the end of September, we had built across the side-heading opposite the great head-wall in the tunnel a head-wall of brickwork in cement, with a door hung as in the previous head-walls. By the 6th October we had so completely mastered the water from the Great Spring that we found it possible to stop one of the largest of the pumps, and hold that in reserve. On the 17th October we effected a junction between the top heading from 5 miles 4 chains and the heading from Sudbrook, making a complete passage from end to end of the tunnel; and as it happened that, without warning, Sir Daniel Gooch, the Chairman of the Great Western Company, and the Earl of Bessborough, one of the directors, came upon the works the same day, we were able to pass them, at two o’clock on the 17th, through the last link of the works, for it was now possible to walk through from the open cutting on the Gloucestershire side to the open cutting on the Monmouthshire side. Though it was possible to pass through, it must not be supposed that the road was the very best or cleanest imaginable. The journey could be made by riding on trolleys from the eastern end of the tunnel to the shaft at Sudbrook; and could also be made from 5 miles 4 chains to the western end of the tunnel in the same way;