This last week has been a busy and interesting week for some of our volunteers. Lynn and Laura, two of our regular volunteers, successfully completed a First Aid course, and also a Health & Safety course too, well done both of you. Their H&S tutor, John Lucas was asked to come and visit us. He did and was intrigued with his visit to Paddington. Volunteers Tom and Ted our resident H&S people looked after John during his tour. We are delighted to say that he was pleased with the H&S procedures that we have in place and gave us some invaluable advice too. We wish to thank John for coming and for all his help and advice.

We were also delighted to receive a phone call from Andy Ormesher, Andy is the Building Manager for Willmott Dixon Construction Ltd, who had the contract to demolish Magnets on Mason Street. Andy announced that Willmott Dixon Construction Ltd had offered to make a donation of tools to the Friends. We were thrilled when Andy turned up on Wednesday with some brand new shovels, picks, hard hats and other small items. We wish to thank Andy and all at Willmott Dixon Construction Ltd for their generous donation.

We reported last week, how we had hit what we thought to be the bedrock floor in the Gypsum Chamber on Level 4. Well this week, we also hit what looks like the bedrock floor at the opposite end of the Ash Chamber where the water is. This is what we have been working towards ever since we rediscovered and started work on the Paddington site back in 1999. As you will see in the photographs, there is still a long way to go to uncover the whole floor. The current depth of Level 4 at this point is now approximately 11.3m (37ft) from floor to ceiling. A truly amazing space…

However, around this newly discovered sandstone is quite a substantial, carved channel at around 0.6m (2ft) deep. We are not sure if the floor will be a similar level throughout the Ash Chamber as yet, though we hope over the next few weeks to expose a little more of the floor which should give us more idea what is going on with the floor level. Stay tuned for more info.

Now that we think we have reached floor Level at this deepest point, we are pleased that this seems to confirm that we are doing quite well with the removal of the water. The water level seems to be dropping to a manageable and controllable level, hopefully anyway.