1836
Box Tunnel
Brunel begins sinking exploratory shafts to examine the geology along the proposed route through Box Hill.
Historical place archive
Browse historical events and people recorded at Box Hill in Great Britain. The records below are rendered directly from the World History Database into this page's initial HTML.
Brunel begins sinking exploratory shafts to examine the geology along the proposed route through Box Hill.
Work begins on Box Tunnel through Box Hill for the Great Western Railway.
Difficult rock strata and heavy water ingress delay excavation, with less than half of the tunnel completed.
The western entrance is finished with a more elaborate architectural treatment than the simpler eastern portal.
Brunel pushes the main contractor to increase the Box Tunnel workforce from about twelve hundred to four thousand men.
The opposing tunnel workings meet with an alignment error of less than two inches and construction is completed.
Box Tunnel opens as the longest railway tunnel in the world at the time.
Provenance
These entries are generated from stored World History Database records whose country and place fields match Great Britain and Box Hill. Names, dates, event labels and descriptions are reviewed and normalised as the database develops. Historical place names may not match modern administrative boundaries.
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