On 4th December, the Feast of St Barbara, Fr Timothy travelled to North Acton to bless two statues of St Barbara. The statues were then placed in tunnels. This strange-sounding behaviour is part of an ancient ritual carried out in tunnels the world over.
These tunnels are part of the new HS2 (High Speed 2) line, which will connect London to Birmingham. HS2 is being built in sections, much of it underground. The underground tunnels are built by tunnel-boring machines, also called moles. You can see a fully-assembled one (Emily) to the left and a part-assembled one (Anne) to the right of this photograph.
What has this got to do with Fr Timothy and St Barbara?
Before joining Ealing Abbey in 1989, Fr Timothy worked for 15 years as a manager for British Rail and is our resident expert for all things rail-related. When the HS2 construction team needed a priest to bless the stautues of St Barbara he was the natural choice.
St Barbara is (among other things) the patron saint of tunnellers and miners. One of the first tasks of every tunnelling project is to set up a small shrine to St Barbara at the entrance to the tunnel. This tradition, and St Barbara’s patronage, follows from the story of her life.
Fr Timothy found it a very stimulating day. He said that he felt it a great honour to be a small part of a very important project. The fully assembled tunnel-boring machine is very impressive. (You can find out more about it here.) It was also a special day for the workers, with a celebration lunch laid on.
The tunnels are about 50 metres below ground level. Although Timothy walked down steps to get to the tunnels, he was grateful to be lifted back up in a cage hauled by a crane.
St Barbara
Although there is a lot of doubt about the story of her life and death, it has much in common with other martyrs of the third century. St Barbara was the daughter of a rich pagan who kept her locked in a tower to protect her from the outside world. While in the tower she was able to appreciate the beauty of God’s creation and was drawn towards Christianity. Her father built a private bath-house for her and, while he was away, she asked the builders to put in a third window to symbolise the Holy Trinity. When her father returned she admitted that she was a Christian and he tried to kill her. She ran from him and a crevice opened up in a hill to hide her.
Eventually she was captured, tortured, and condemned to death. Her father beheaded her with a sword and on his way home was struck by lighning and died.
Paintings and statues of St Barbara usually show her holding a chalice and a sword, with a tower behind her. The chalice represents a sharing in Christ’s sacrifice, while the sword represents the tool of her martyrdom. It is common to depict martyrs holding the tool of their martyrdom; it shows that they have conquered death. The tower represents the tower in which her father imprisoned her. Sometimes St Barbara is shown with a palm branch, which is a common symbol of martyrdom. There is a story that, while she was being tortured with whips, the whips tuned into peackock feathers. For this reason, she is also sometimes depicted with peacock feathers.
Photo by Wolfgang Sauber, licensed by Wikimedia Commons, cropped by Ealing Abbey.
Find out more about St Barbara
Tunnelling Under London
The first tunnel under the Thames was built by men working in a cage. They chipped away the rock in front of them and passed the spoil behind them. This method was devised by Marc Brunel, the son of the famous engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Now specialist machines use the same principle but faster and more safely.
The tunnels on the Northolt East section of HS2 are being built by machines named Emily and Mary. Each machine is 140 metres long and has a crew of 17 people. The machines work 24 hours a day. They have a drilling face at the front which passes the rock through pipes and conveyors to the back of the machine. Every time the machine drills out two metres of tunnel it stops and puts in the concrete lining. This lining is two metres wide and comes in curved sections of about 4 metres. Since the tunnels are about 9 metres wide it needs five sections to make the complete circle of lining for the tunnel.
The Tunnelling Machines at Northolt East
The machines drilling the Northolt East tunnel are named Emily and Anne. Anne is named after Lady Anne Byron who was married to the poet Lord Byron. As well as being an active campaigner to abolish slavery, she founded Ealing Grove school, the first industrial (or cooperative) school in England. This school combined academic work with activities such as gardening; it also banned corporal punishment. Lady Byron’s daughter, Ada Lovelace, was the world’s first computer programmer.
The other machine, Emily, is named after Emily Sophia Taylor, who was the first female councillor in Hanwell and then Ealing when the two councils merged. She was also the first female mayor of Ealing. Emily Taylor was very active in both education and child welfare, and helped set up Perivale Maternity Hospital. Coincidentally, her husband was an accountant for the railways.
More about the Northolt tunnels