| May & Co. photo.] | [Northwich. |
For so universal and expected are these subsidences, that the houses are now all built in wooden frames with massive timber beams screwed tightly together. This has revived a style of building common enough more than a hundred years ago, specimens of which are often seen in country places. If the house subsides it falls as a whole and does not necessarily collapse. All you have to do is to use a screw-jack to raise the house, fill in the hole, remove the jack, and sleep as before till another subsidence, when the same operation is gone through. Castle Chambers, however, were taken down and the ground made "sound." Twelve months after another subsidence took place, and the result is shown in the above photograph.
| May & Co. photo.] | [Northwich. |
Just opposite Castle Chambers stood the old "Wheat Sheaf Inn." It was built with timber to resist the dreaded subsidence, but to no purpose. Money was frequently spent in making good the damage done. One year it had to be raised no less than nine feet! A year after part of the building disappeared, then the cellars went, and as a climax a horse which was in the stable was swallowed up.
One Sunday morning a neighbouring farmer put his horse—worth £30 with its harness—into the stable, and when he returned after doing his business, he found that the beast had gone down a hole 15 ft. in diameter which had suddenly opened. The house was then pulled down and built further up the street. This shows how owners in Northwich stand to lose both buildings and the sites of them.
Next to the "Wheat Sheaf" was a butcher's shop, which was robbed one day of a sausage machine by the gaping earth. When it is mentioned that a second horse disappeared, and that a minister had a narrow escape from being swallowed, the fun of the following story will be appreciated. The minister one day in a funny mood was making some remarks at a public meeting about the strange disappearance of the horses and the sausage machine. He suggested that when the people below received the first horse they naturally wanted a sausage machine, and hence the disappearance of that useful article. Then so much did they enjoy the produce of the machine that they wanted a second horse, and hence the second disappearance. At this point the chairman of the meeting rose and gravely asked whether on one occasion they did not also want a minister (referring to the funny man's escape), and the story-teller meekly ended his tale.
Another extraordinary subsidence was that which took place in a house in Tabley Street. The family were quietly seated in a room when they heard a tremendous crash, which soon brought the neighbours out to see what was the matter. An adjoining room was found to be minus its fireplace; instead there was a big hole reaching to the cellar beneath. The marble mantel-piece was smashed, and the tiled floor or hearth had fallen to the cellar. The cellar wall of the next house had given way, and there was great danger that the chimney would come smashing down. Soon after the walls cracked and the floors were drawn apart, making the house more breezy than comfortable. This was a peculiarly hard case, for the proprietor had recently spent a good deal of money in putting the property in order. In the end, the house and site were worth nothing.
