An underground chamber could be the reason a structure hailed as ‘Abingdon’s answer to the Tower of Pisa’ has been tilting more and more over the years.
Engineers Hockley and Dawson spent a day carrying out exploratory work on the 88-year-old war memorial in The Square.
Readings taken since 2002 revealed the structure has moved a few millimetres each year.
Now, Abingdon Town Council, which owns the memorial, says it is time to act.
Project manager Steve Rich said: “It’s Abingdon’s answer to Pisa, but now we have to look at the war memorial as the tilt has got more pronounced. We want to keep it and ensure that it’s safe and structurally sound.”
The work involved taking up some of the paving around the memorial.
A report by the engineers, which the council expects before the end of the month, will give a fuller picture, but Mr Rich believes the foundations and an underground chamber are to blame.
He said: “Our work showed that the foundations are unsafe for the war memorial. However, this has to be confirmed by the engineers.
“The soil there is very sandy and soft and the foundations aren’t built for that type of soil.
“They are not adequate and need to be deeper and bigger.
“This gives us a problem as next to the memorial is a chamber which houses a capped well.
“This chamber is made of reinforced concrete and must have been dug sometime in the 20th century, after the war memorial was put up.
“We feel digging this chamber undermined the war memorial, which is why it’s leaning.”
Mr Rich said if the report confirmed this, there were two options to make it safe – to take down the memorial and build better foundations or to underpin it, which would incur a “significant cost”.
Mr Rich added: “The town council realises that it is responsible and the war memorial is very important to the town.
“It’s something that will need to be here forever.”
abingdon@oxfordmail.co.uk
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