One of the interesting things we learnt following the surprise discovery of the abandonded well in the back garden not long after buying our house was what lies below us.
As the well went vertically down for over 50 feet you could easily see the layers it passed through. These were a metre or so of topsoil, then (from memory) a couple of metres or so of thick red clay and under that just solid sandstone. I remember thinking at the time that this was good news as when small detached house like ours were built in the mid 19th century there were no architects or surveyors etc used 0 you just relied on the experience and common sense of the jobbing builder that you employed to build your house.
I suppose in our case the master builder would dig a number of inspection pits across the plot and the decide with the owner what he/she wanted the house to look like and where it and the front & back gardens were positioned in the 1,000sq yard plot that was one of 350 indentically sized ones that made up the speculative Cressington Park development.
There now follows guesswork based on how I would build and also what I’e found when crawling around under rooms that are not over the cellar. Concrete did not exist then so instead of poiring a big slab as foundations our builder maybe dug trenches wherever there would be a wall, both external and internal. In our case Im sure he wopuld have encountered the sandstone bedrock in places but in others where the lay of the land meant less depth I reckon they backfilled with hardcore (maybe failures from the local brickwirks in ?Garston where he got all the handmade bricks from). Then fter a bit of tamping they just started laying the bricks for the walls.
This is why the well discovery brought good news as solid sandstone must make for a good solid base to build on.
** Finally getting to the point …..
It was some years later that it occured to me that it had another potential advantage and that was the bedrock would make an excellent location for a seismograph. Ever since the internet got going, now and again I check various sites that show current or recent eathquake activity. This is mainly in search of loacl activity and is prompted becuase I have expereienced two eathquakes in Liverpool. The first was when lying in bed with Chris and having just woken up we were both suddenly aware of an odd noise and then almost immediately it was obvious the room was shaking and without even thinking saying to each other – “****, it’s an earthquake !!” and then a second or so later the sound of a crash somehere above us which turned out to be a disused chimney pot falling down onto the roof. I rembere saying to Chris “we’ve got structural damage – we’ll be on telly” but despite there only being one other report I never bothered to take up our five minumtes of fame. My second eathquake came just a few years later when I was in the large upstairs showroom of a boating type retailer looking for a new inflateable dfinghy. I had just sat down on the helming position of one of these when it became obvious the whole buiding was moving. Being a light weight almost prefabricated structure it did not put up any resitance to this movement, in fact it sort of ‘went with the flow’ and probably eggarated it. Again. just like the first time I realsed instantly that it was an earttquake but for some reason this did not xxx to the sales guy that was upstairs with me and when he hard me say “oh wow, its an earthquake” he got very agitated and I think he just froze in panic. I’m no Mr Survivor but I quickly realsed we were in such a lightweight buiding our only risk was if any roof panels fell but by the time I looked around for a desk or something to get under the whole event was over.
So when it comes to UK sesimic activity tow