It's Warmer Down Below: The Autobiography of Sir Harold Harding, 1900–1986
This delightful autobiography, edited by Amanda Davey, granddaughter of Sir Harold Harding, is a fascinating account of the life and professional career of one of the most distinguished civil engineers of the twentieth century. ‘HJBH’, as Sir Harold is referred to throughout the book, was the founding Chairman of the British Tunnelling Society (BTS), a past President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, a Director of Mowlem and, in his later life, an expert adviser on numerous tunnelling and underground construction projects.
Much of the content of this excellent book is derived from 116 letters that HJBH wrote to the ‘Twenty One Club’, which was founded in 1922 and formed by the 28 original members from the City and Guilds Engineering College (part of Imperial College), who mostly graduated in 1921 – HJBH being one of them. There are more anecdotes than in his previous book Tunnelling History and My Own Involvement, published in 1981 – many of them on a wide range of subjects other than tunnelling and underground construction, making this a fascinating account from an observant, shrewd and witty man who lived through most of the twentieth century (1900–1986).
After graduating in civil engineering from the City and Guilds Engineering College in 1921, HJBH's first job was with the contractor John Mowlem and Co., on a salary of £3 per week, paid monthly – he remained with that company for 35 years. The first project on which he worked was the Camden Town flying junction tunnels. There he encountered ‘Bumper’ Harris, the famous one-legged tunnel miner, who taught him all there is to know about tunnelling through unstable running ground. His descriptions of the chainmen and miners with whom he worked as a young engineer are marvellous (‘Curly’ Bennett, ‘Cumberland’ Joe and ‘Tall Faced’ Charley, to name a few). HJBH clearly learned a great deal from such people in those early days of his tunnelling career.
HJBH makes many shrewd observations (p. 10)
…a contract worth £1 million in those early days would in more recent years cost nearly 20 times as much, due to Parkinson's Law and the growth of paperwork, two or three engineers doing the work of one. In modern large firms, the central control is so distant that reams of paper, returns, cost analysis and constant reports are needed so that directors and accountants in their executive suites can create the illusion that they are in control.
Such comments are typical throughout the book.
His accounts of the numerous complex tunnelling and underground projects on which he worked should be read by all tunnelling and geotechnical engineers. Piccadilly Circus station and its connecting tunnels was one of many of his projects – the model made by HJBH and his wife of this highly complex project is now in the London Transport Museum. His descriptions of the compressed air caissons finally adopted to construct the foundations and deep excavations for the Fords Power House at Dagenham – because the cement grouting failed to prevent water flow through the sands and gravels – make graphic reading. The sand had proved to be too fine for effective grouting. This and other unhappy experiences of trying to prevent water inflow through sands and gravels by cement grouting led to Mowlem forming a commercial relationship with Siemens to exploit chemical grouting (the ‘Joosten’ process of Boden-Verfestigung, which HJBH translated as ‘chemical consolidation’ – a term that would stick, although somewhat misleading). HJBH describes his visit to Siemens in Germany in the early 1930s to learn more about the Joosten process and other ground treatment techniques, such as wellpoint dewatering, both of which he was instrumental in getting introduced to the UK. He subsequently produced many publications on the subject of practical ground treatment, one of which ‘The choice of expedients in civil engineering construction’ (Works Construction Paper No. 6, pp. 3–31), published in 1946, is a classic paper.
A seminal event for HJBH, and indeed for the whole soil mechanics community, was the failure of the Chingford Reservoir embankment in 1937. Terzaghi was called in to advise, and Cooling, Skempton and Golder, all at the Building Research Station (BRS; now Building Research Establishment (BRE)) at the time, became involved along with HJBH and Glossop. A few years later, towards the end of the Second World War, HJBH, Glossop and Golder founded Soil Mechanics Ltd.
HJBH was incredibly active during the Second World War, principally dealing with emergencies arising from the Blitz. A notable example he describes is the wellpoint dewatering needed to enable an excavation of around 10 m through sands and gravels at the National Physical Laboratory at Teddington in order to recover an unexploded bomb. He also became closely involved in the deep excavations associated with construction of the Mulberry Harbours, subsequently to be towed across to France. After the Second World War, HJBH was heavily involved as a director of Mowlem with many construction projects. He describes the process of the ‘taking’ of a tender, at which he and other directors would decide what plant should be involved and what the tender price should be – he mentions that 100 tenders of all sorts and sizes would be dealt with in a typical year, and usually only ten would be successful.
In 1956 HJBH became an independent consultant, advising on numerous construction projects and engineering failures all round the world. In 1966 he became a member of the Aberfan Tribunal following the tragic liquefaction failure of a colliery tip, engulfing the village of Aberfan and leading to the loss of 116 children in the local school. This was another seminal event for the soil mechanics community. He became closely involved with the Channel Tunnel, a project that dominated his life for the next 30 years. He was much involved with the site investigations and detailed studies, and saw the start of tunnelling, only for the project to be cancelled by the government in the early 1970s, to his bitter disappointment. In the early 1980s HJBH vigorously lobbied Margaret Thatcher's government for the Channel Tunnel project to be resumed. He had the huge pleasure to receive the news of its go-ahead only a few months before he died in 1986.
HJBH's legacy to tunnelling is long-lasting and influential. In 1971 he became the founding Chairman of the BTS, which continues to be extremely active; the Harding Prize for young tunnelling engineers and the Harding Memorial Lecture, both important events in the calendar of the BTS, commemorate his extraordinary contributions to the art and practice of tunnelling and geotechnical engineering.
In the material throughout this book Sir Harold Harding was not afraid to describe the things that went wrong, which is always more educational than only reading accounts of success stories. He wrote ‘In most civil engineering works worthy of the name, the unexpected happens’. It is his descriptions of unexpected events – ranging from flooding of excavations arising from failures of grouting operations to gas explosions – that make this book such a valuable, informative and entertaining read. This excellent book is a mine of fascinating information and a witty account of the extraordinary career of a very special man – a pioneer of tunnelling and practical geotechnical engineering.
