Floating brick column mystery

[Hypercast]

Hi All,

 

I have a bit of a mystery to solve and wonder if anyone has seen this before. My property has an extension that mirrors the original property in design, however is made with a cavity brick construction (approx 1910) on the left side of the column, which is connected to a solid brick wall construction on the right side from the mid 1800s. From what I can tell, the join for these two different construction types is hidden by a column that is pinned in place and is floating? The foundation for the join goes into my basement kitchen and doesn’t lookout of place. Outside this column appears to hover off the ground. Which as you can see in the attached picture is weird? I have dug out 3-4 brick course down and put some concrete in place to link this outer column to the ground. The missing brick in this picture was knocked off by accident by the lawn mower. The missing course underneath this has always looked like this and as far as I know been there since it was constructed. Before I add the missing course, has anyone seen this before or can explain why the wall was built like this? 
 

thanks

[Carrerahill]

This is really just one idea out of many possibles but may shed some light, when the first and second part of the building were built foundations as we know them today didn't really exist, they used corbelled brick foundations which are basically wide brick walls laid directly into a prepared trench.

 

Many many 100,000 of buildings and structures, millions in fact stand across the UK like this, have done for a century an will do for another with basic maintenance and care. 

 

Sometimes due to lack of a unified foundation individual areas of the building can settle and move, it is possible that at some point someone even removed these lower bricks not understanding what they were - "oh there is a row of bricks, they are in my way" they are removed and all seems fine, fast forward a few decades and another course of two drops and gives you this "floating" column. 

 

It could also just have slipped - the fact is the bricks went somewhere, it was not built like that, it only stands because it is tied into the other walls. 

 

If it was me I think I would dig a local pit around this column, investigate the makeup and then place a proper foundation around it all and make up to the underside of the column. What I would want to achieve by exposing more down below is how the column and the wall behind it all ties in together and make certain that it is going to stand for another 100 years without any issues. 

 

Edited August 26, 2020 by Carrerahill

[Hypercast]

40 minutes ago, Carrerahill said:

This is really just one idea out of many possibles but may shed some light, when the first and second part of the building were built foundations as we know them today didn't really exist, they used corbelled brick foundations which are basically wide brick walls laid directly into a prepared trench.

 

Many many 100,000 of buildings and structures, millions in fact stand across the UK like this, have done for a century an will do for another with basic maintenance and care. 

 

Sometimes due to lack of a unified foundation individual areas of the building can settle and move, it is possible that at some point someone even removed these lower bricks not understanding what they were - "oh there is a row of bricks, they are in my way" they are removed and all seems fine, fast forward a few decades and another course of two drops and gives you this "floating" column. 

 

It could also just have slipped - the fact is the bricks went somewhere, it was not built like that, it only stands because it is tied into the other walls. 

 

If it was me I think I would dig a local pit around this column, investigate the makeup and then place a proper foundation around it all and make up to the underside of the column. What I would want to achieve by exposing more down below is how the column and the wall behind it all ties in together and make certain that it is going to stand for another 100 years without any issues. 

 

Lovely response, thank you! That does help make some sense of it. When I dug out below this, there wasn’t any sign of any bricks etc. All that was there was a piece of rusty old 6” pipe length that had been dumped with some old glass bottles and jars. Your theory of the bricks being removed over time makes sense and I agree it must be pinned in place. There are no signs of movement in this column, but to be safe I’ll put a concrete base in and use some engineer bricks to give some support in case it did suddenly drop (although that would require multiple pin points to fail and hopefully I would see obvious damage showing before then!).

 

I’ll see what I can do about investigation of the column without disturbing it further!

 

If anyone else has any other theories and wants to take a punt, then please let me know!