CRACKING UP
Between pillars 15 and 16, you can see a gaping hole through the walls and floors. It is well worth a look and you need have no qualms about standing on it. The opening runs over several floors, straight through the premises. We call it an expansion joint and it was caused by the settlement of the building. Seventy-two million tons of coal were quarried on this site. Taking so much material out of the ground led to subsidence on the surface. Mining engineers knew that this would happen and ensured that their own mine buildings lay outside the risk area. In other words, to avoid their building subsiding or cracking, they didn’t build immediately above or close to the excavation site. What do you think, did subsidence of the building cause this expansion joint? Or wasn’t this place far enough away from the excavation site?