Autograph letter signed ("affectionately your dear Father") to I. K. Brunel ("My dear Isambard"), one page, 8vo with diagram and integral address leaf, verso dated Febr. 1838 in a clerical hand.

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Autograph letter signed ("affectionately your dear Father") to I. K. Brunel ("My dear Isambard"), one page, 8vo with diagram and integral address leaf, verso dated Feb^r. 1838 in a clerical hand.
Asking Isambard whether, at the period he worked on the tunnel arches, he graduated the size of the piers, and expressing his own preference for an even size of pier or pillar all the way up. "We are going on and shall encrease soon our progress. Tell me now whether you were in the habit of making the lower portion of the arches by 18ⁱⁿ piers including Foundations -- viz. this position but completing the upper part in 9ⁱⁿ. [diagram of lower section of the horseshoe archways] I prefer 9in. all the way because the Bricklayers are sooner out of the way in one place or the other -- Influx continues remarkably moderate and ground fair for subverted ground -- water and sand at no. 8 -- but the men feel themselves comfortable -- I am well and affectionately yours ever with love to Mary."
As a post script, Brunel adds: "Bad pen. your dear mother is pretty well."

Lot Essay

"No. 8" is almost certainly a reference to number eight frame in the famous "shield" or excavation rig which Brunel Senior had patented in 1818. There were twelve frames in the rectangular shield. Each frame had three levels allowing three miners to work, one above the other, on the same vertical section of the tunnel face. A total work force of thirty-six miners could therefore excavate the tunnel at one time (See the illustration on p. 12 of this catalogue). The huge iron frames have been compared to "A row of hollow books -- each book representing a frame containing three cells -- and each capable of being advanced independently" (Paul Clements, Marc Isambard Brunel, 1970, p. 92). When tunnelling was re-started on 25 March 1835, after a lapse of six and a half years, this was with an improved shield manufactured by John Rennie.

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