ndations at the centre of
the north-west pillar, and the adjacent arches were lifted some nine
inches, while these ruins "suddenly jumping down, made a great Heap of
Ruin in the Place without scattering." Wren estimated the whole weight
lifted at three thousand tons, and the labour saved equal to that of a
battalion of a thousand men. When the alarmed inhabitants of the
neighbourhood heard and felt the concussion, they naturally took it
for an earthquake. In the surveyor's absence a subordinate used too
much powder in attempting a second mine, and neither burying it low
enough nor building up the mouth, a stone was projected through an
open window into a room where some women were sitting at work.
Although no one was hit, the neighbours took alarm, and successfully
agitated against all further blasting. Delay was caused, and finally a
battering-ram some forty feet in length, worked by thirty men,
completed the demolition. The stones and rubbish were cleared away,
and used in different buildings and in repairing the streets.
Afterwards some houses on the north side which encroached on the
building, and may have been those that assisted the passage of the
Fire, were levelled, and their site included in the churchyard.

When at length the ruins of Old St. Paul's had come down and the huge
mass of wreckage been cleared away, working from the west the
excavations for the new foundations were begun. The old cathedral had
rested on a layer of loam, or "pot earth" or "brick earth," near the
surface; and wells being sunk at various points to ascertain the depth
of this, it was found that the loam, owing to the ground sloping
towards the south, gradually diminished from a depth of six feet to
four. Sinking further, they found sand so loose as to run through the
fingers; next, freshwater shells and more sand, and continuing through
hard beach or gravel, they reached at last the London clay.[58] At one
point of the north-east corner, where the loam had been dug out, Wren
was compelled to rest the foundations on the clay; and it seems almost
a pity that this was not universally adopted, at whatever additional
cost of time and labour, in preference to the loam. The building had
not long been completed ere the great weight of the dome caused some
of the piers to sink from an inch to more than two inches, and Edward
Strong the younger had to repair cracks and fissures.[59] Dean Milman
tells us that in his time the City authorities once