TUNNEL RESERVOIR.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 14, 27 October 1934, Page 8

TUNNEL RESERVOIR.

THE LARGEST IN BRITAIN. LENGTH OF FOUR MILES. A correspondent of a London newspaper was lately lowered in a bucket 176 ft into Great Britain's largest underground reservoir. He writes:—■ "Groping and wading .through water up to my knees along a tunnel hewn through a great chalk stratum, I have had a glimpse of the incalculable subterranean water-courses which are available to this drought-stricken country. Engineers are tapping this underground water at Mansion, in Kent, for the Ramsgate Corporation. "The subterranean reservoir consists of a 3£-mile tunnel 6ft high and 4ft broad. It runs east and west from Ramsgate through the chalk hills, breaking the water-bearing fissures so that water oozes into the tunnel. For years Ramsgate has drawn off 1,333,000 gallons of water daily and 1,750,000 gallons at holiday times. "Now a tunnel is being bored for another mile.* Already the tunnel has, in the half-mile bored, broken oyer 50 fissures and hopes are entertained of securing a million gallons extrawater a day." Mr O. H. Jacobsen, engineer to the contractors, helped the correspondent out the bucket at the foot of the shaft. As they went along the tunnel he pointed to the springs in the floor from which, water was gushing audi said: "Those are the water-bearing fissures. Some are only knife-edge wide; others 'are six inches to a foot wide ; they run north and south for miles and we are cutting through,them east to west." The water in the tunnel is at present kept down by pumping but when the work is finished at the end of this year it will rise nearly to the roof.