Harold Harding - Work With Mowlem

Work With Mowlem

Upon graduation Harding joined John Mowlem & Co., an engineering contractor, where he worked on the development of the London Underground network including the reconstruction of the Piccadilly Circus tube station from 1926-9. In 1927 he married Sophie Helen Blair, an artist with whom he had constructed a model of the Piccadilly works for the Science Museum and the London Transport Museum and the daughter of the Pre-Raphaelite painter Edmund Leighton. They had two sons and a daughter. During this period Harding was the first to employ the technique of dewatering of soil in the UK and the first to use the Joosten process of stabilisation by two part chemical injection.

In 1931 Harding worked on the construction of the new Ford Motor Company plant at Dagenham. Major foundation problems had to be overcome during the works as the plant was sited on the spot where Cornelius Vermuyden had closed a breach in the Thames in 1621-2. From this experience Harding developed an interest in chemical consolidation techniques and was a pioneer in their use. He was in charge of the 1936-9 extension of the London Underground's Central Line from Bow Road tube station to Leytonstone.