At that time, the interior was choaked up with rubbish, several feet above the present surface, and overspread with ashlings, alders, and trees, the growth of such situations, to a very considerable height.
[T]he traditional memory of a rural and a sylvan region, such as Warwickshireat that time was, is usually exact as well as tenacious
1948 September and October, “Weekend Works in the Severn Tunnel”, inRailway Magazine, page299:
At that time it was thought that the critical section, in which an irruption of water from the river was to be feared, lay under the Shoots, but this proved not to be the case.