TIMBER FOUNDATIONS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 142, 18 May 1936, Page 5

TIMBER FOUNDATIONS.

WATERLOO BRIDGE. The wooden piles which for over one hundred years supported Waterloo Bridge, London, are now being extracted by means of cranes. Engineers have found that the 10,0U0 tons weight on each pier is borne by 200 to 300 timber piles, on which timber platforms were built to support the stone structure. . Mr E. H. B. Boulton, technical director of the Timber Development Association, in conversation with a Press representative, said that the piles varied from beautiful cylindrical boles, 19ft long and 20in in diameter, to very crooked stems not more than 16ft long and Bin wide. Beech, as one expected, was the chief timber, but elm was used too, and, rather surprisingly, tecotch pine. It was the sort of selection of trees that one would expect to find growing together on one Buckinghamshire estate, and that was their probable origin. . This variety of dimensions ancl species seemed to have been used baphazard, and it was amazing that the piles should have borne the weight of the bridge for 120 years.