The Diver Beneath Winchester Cathedral

In 1905, engineers discovered that Winchester Cathedral, one of England's longest medieval churches, was slowly sinking into marshy Hampshire soil. Its ancient foundations, laid nearly a thousand years earlier, were crumbling in waterlogged peat. The structure that had sheltered centuries of worship was collapsing from beneath. Enter William Walker, a deep-sea diver. From 1906 to 1912, Walker descended alone into the flooded trenches beneath the cathedral.…