|
|
| Volume 6, Number 11 - Summer 2008 | |
|
|
IWA RESTORATION ROUND-UPThe following development and restoration information is extracted from the IWA's monthly Head Office Bulletin which is sent free to Association members on request. Droitwich Canals Three week-long WRG Canal Camps over the summer have seen near completion of the restoration of the Barge Lock in Droitwich, and the work is to be celebrated with an event at the site on 26th September. WRG's Canal Camps also achieved a range of good media coverage for restoration of the waterway, including a slot on the regional BBC TV news and reports on local radio. Liverpool Link British Waterways has installed new 4-tonne lock gates at Mann Island Lock as part of the £20m creation of the innovative Liverpool Canal Link. The lock gates at Mann Island are particularly significant because they will effectively form the gateway into the South Docks when the Canal Link opens to boating traffic in spring 2009. The five-metre-high gates were built by local engineering company Twinbridge of Burscough, and fitted with paddles and winding gear by British Waterways at its Stanley Ferry workshop. The new gates form the centrepiece of the Mann Island Basin, before boats descend into South Docks for their final step of their journey along the Leeds & Liverpool Canal. Construction of the canal link is nearing the final stages as the Pier Head engineering works are almost complete with the Central Docks and Mann Island section progressing well. Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal The opening of the Middlewood Section of the Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal and the formal naming of the Margaret Fletcher Tunnel is due to take place on Friday 19th September. Plans are being made for a few boats to be able to enter the canal from the River Irwell, subject to the vagaries of the river, which can quickly become a raging torrent following high rainfall. Civic dignitaries and senior officials from British Waterways are due to be present, but this it is intended as an opportunity for waterways enthusiasts to enjoy, and for friends of the late Margaret Fletcher to celebrate her life. All are welcome to watch the celebrations, but only a limited number of boats will be able to ascend into the canal, and there will be a limit to the number of passengers that they can carry. John Fletcher, IWA national chairman, and chairman of Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal Society, has been asked to officially cut the ribbon at the entrance from the river Irwell and to unveil the memorial plaques on each end of the tunnel. Ashby Canal IWA's National Trailboat Festival for 2009 is to be held on the restored length of the Ashby Canal at Moira, which is at the very northern end of the canal in Leicestershire. The festival will be held over the Spring Bank Holiday Weekend 23rd- 25th May 2009. The canal through Moira was restored between 1999 and 2005 following its previous progressive abandonment due to mining subsidence, and which is part of a longer-term scheme to restore the canal from Snarestone to its original terminus at Moira. By featuring the festival at the recently restored section at Moira, IWA Festivals hopes that the event will show-case the work done by the Ashby Canal Trust and raise awareness for the continuing restoration. The festival site includes the includes the only lock (so far) in existence on the Ashby Canal, and is set adjacent to the impressive Moira Furnace, a grade 2 listed building in the heart of the National Forest. The featured restored length of canal is approximately 2000m long and includes two permanent slipways. Bedford & Milton Keynes Waterway The Awards for All National Lottery Fund has offered Bedford and Milton Keynes Waterway Trust a £7,000 grant to provide signposts and interpretation boards along a section of the path from The Forest Centre, Marston Vale to Wootton of the proposed waterway. Two years ago the Trust obtained similar funding for a section of the route in Milton Keynes. Since August 2007, Richard Wood, seconded from the Department of Communities and Local Government, has been working with landowners and councils to create a permissive path along the rest of the route. Chesterfield Canal IWA's National Campaign Festival for 2009 is to be held at Kiveton Park, near Rotherham, on the summit level of the Chesterfield Canal. The Festival will be held over the Spring Bank Holiday Weekend 23rd - 25th May 2009. IWA wants to build support for the work of the Chesterfield Canal Partnership in its plans to replace the collapsed Norwood Tunnel with a surface route and thereby reconnect Kiveton Park to those parts of the canal that are already restored, and the parts of the canal that are currently under restoration in Derbyshire. IWA also hopes to spur on the Partnership's plans for a new navigable link between the Chesterfield Canal and the Sheffield & South Yorkshire Navigation in Rotherham. The Festival organisers also hope to encourage visiting boaters to use the Chesterfield Canal and other lesser frequented waterways of the lower Trent. The Festival location is at the limit of British Waterways' ownership of the Canal, and within a few yards of Norwood Tunnel the collapse of which caused the closure of the Canal beyond this point in 1908. The Chesterfield Canal is one of the county's earliest canals, and was the last to be designed by James Brindley. Within its 46 miles it traverses widely different urban and rural landscapes and has a wide range of heritage features, many unique to the Chesterfield Canal. Cotswold Canals On 5th June, Stroud District Council voted to step into the breach left by British Waterways' withdrawal from restoration work on the Cotswold Canals. Councillors decided to apply as lead partner to the Heritage Lottery Fund for the original £12m allocated to the restoration for the canal from Saul Junction to Brimscombe Port in Stroud. This allocation was put on hold when British Waterways unexpectedly withdrew as lead partner in February 2008. 33 Councillors voted in favour of taking the lead in the project; 3 voted against and 3 abstained. At a public meeting held in Gloucester on 14th June, Robin Evans, Chief Executive of British Waterways, confirmed that should the application be successful then BW would transfer its lease on the Stroudwater Navigation to Stroud District Council. Grantham Canal In the late summer of last year Woolsthorpe Top Lock on the Grantham Canal started to show signs of cracking on the off-side wall. Consequently, British Waterways immediately installed heavy steel props between the walls of the chamber to prevent the off-side wall collapsing completely into the lock. After a short while, BW decided that, owing to financial constraints and the Grantham Canal was a Remainder Waterway, its cheapest option was to fill in the lock with aggregate or stone until it had sufficient money to carry out a full repair. The Grantham Canal Partnership and Grantham Canal Society had meetings with BW to discuss alternatives to infilling, but neither organisation could afford to meet BW's requirements. BW would only pay for the propping until the end of the financial year and then fill in the lock. Fortunately, IWA has been advised of a potential legacy, which although restricted in its purpose could be spent on restoration work on the Grantham Canal. Early in 2008, John Baylis, IWA's representative on the Grantham Canal Partnership and East Midlands Region Chairman, met the executors of the legacy and discussed options for spending the money and both agreed that it should be spent on major project rather than on routine maintenance. An approach was made to BW at Newark discuss the spending of the bequest. BW expressed interested but needed more details as to how the work might be done and what the estimated cost would be. IWA suggested that it would be better to demolish the wall to remove the props and start partial repairs, with a view to raising more money complete the rebuilding. BW was, however, adamant it wanted to see sufficient money available to complete the work, but agreed to leave the props in until after the deadline of 31st March provided that the volunteers could pay for them. That money is now coming from a private donation by a member of the Grantham Canal Society. Woolsthorpe Top Lock had been partially repaired in 1992 when the top three locks were re-gated and fortunately Roy Sutton, one of IWA's honorary consultant engineers, had carried out a full survey of profiles of the off-side wall at that time. A new survey showed almost unchanged profiles. With the co-operation of BW engineers, contractors prepared the lock for a more detailed survey of the walls below low water level and of the brick invert. That survey, although brief, revealed that the whole wall just above the invert had slid several inches sideways and water was leaking through the crack and washing sediment into the base of the lock. Roy Sutton then prepared a method for demolishing the wall down to its original foundations and rebuilding in mass concrete with a brick face. The main problem with doing such a major work as demolishing a lock wall is to ensure that there is sufficient weight left in the wall to prevent the invert slipping from the weight of the remaining wall and causing a total collapse. When the locks were built, the wall foundations were kept apart by an inverted brick arch so that the pressure from the growing walls was transmitted to the ground underneath the inverted arch. As both sides were built together the weight was distributed evenly, but in total each side wall probably weighs 300 to 400 tons. Removing one side could allow the weight of the other side to slide or push the invert into where the demolished wall was standing. Roy Sutton has devised a method of piling and partial demolition of the off-side wall to allow for sufficient weight and thrust to prevent the invert from moving. This method is believed to be the most economical and safest. There is no opportunity for work by volunteers, and BW insists on contractors doing the work. Unfortunately all this extra work will cost money and, despite some promised contributions from BW, there is still a shortfall of the total cost of re-building of about £50,000. If the funds cannot be raised within the next six weeks the lock will be filled in. IWA's view is that it would be extremely unfortunate to allow BW to fill in the lock, as it will cost much more to remove the infill and then rebuild at a later date. It could put the restoration of the Grantham Canal back by ten or twenty years and could nullify much of the work funded by the East Midlands Development Agency's grant of £350,000 spent on dredging and tree cutting on the top pound in 2006-7, partly in preparing for the National Trailboat Festival held then. IWA is trying to acquire grants for doing the work, but the granting timescale is months and there is a need to get the work done before the bad weather this coming winter. IWA has had promises of approaching £20,000 but is still well short of the target. Leeds & Liverpool Canal Wigan Metropolitan Borough Council has approved the construction of a 40-berth marina on part of the site of the former Bickershaw Colliery, near Plank Lane Bridge, as part of a major redevelopment of the 237-acre area, which will include a regional park with a visitor centre, community facilities including an 18-hole golf course and outside activity area, as well as the marina, which is to be cut into the former mine's storage yard. Funding is being provided through the National Coalfields Programme and more than £36 million being provided by the Government. Plank Lane itself is to be realigned as part of the scheme, but highways engineers decided to keep the existing moveable bridge, rather than build a high-level structure over the canal. There are also proposals for a mixed-use development of 650 residential units and commercial units as part of the development, but these have yet to be approved by the Council's planning committee. The site has been empty since the colliery closed in 1992.
The last coal barges leave Bickershaw Colliery in August 1972 - pictured by Hugh Potter Shrewsbury Canal At a meeting on 16th June, Telford and Wrekin Borough Council's ruling cabinet agreed to recommend to the full Council that substantial funding be provided to buy a stretch of the canal, warehouse buildings and the basin at Wappenshall, near Newport. The decision is due to be ratified at a meeting of the full Council on 26th June, but if approved it will pave the way for Shrewsbury and Newport Canal Trust and the Council to work in partnership to redevelop the site, bring it back into use and create a new visitor attraction. These buildings have long been held to be of significant historic interest. The exact amount of funding and cost of purchase has not yet been disclosed by the Council as a matter of commercial confidence.
Index for this issue Index of all Canal Cuttings issues Home Page Site design and content © 2002 - 2009 Sankey Canal Restoration Society |
