Frost on the ground
as we set up the tea
table
Sunday was a very bright morning with quite a bit of frost on the ground. 30 of us gathered at the lock side around 9.30, some members of the Ipswich IWA and some members of the East Anglian Waterways Association and a few members of both. I had visited the lock a couple of weeks earlier for a look round and to take a few photos, so this site contains some before and after shots.
Tree branch in
car parking area
The first job tackled was to remove a long low tree branch in the car parking area, this gives room for two more cars to park on reasonably firm ground. Unfortunately this area was still not available for us to use as there was a large bag of sand left there for filling sandbags and we had to leave our cars up by the old railway bridge and walk down Weavers Way to the lock.
The branch has gone making room to park
The tree roots have
lifted the concrete
toping off the lock walls
There were three main tasks for the day. The major one of these was to remove two large tree stumps that were growing down the back of the lock wall on the west side.
Tree stumps removed with little damage to the brick
work
The second was to use the large bag of sand that had been delivered to the car cark to make sandbags. These were to be used to dam the water in the dyke to facilitate building a bridge to allow vehicle access to the lock side.
Looking upstream from the head of the lock
The third was to clear undergrowth from the canal side
up stream of the lock so
a) people could walk along the bank
b) ready
for the construction of a weir just above the lock.
After we had cleared 120 yards of bank
Two of the boys hard at it on bonfire duty
After we had unloaded all the equipment and carried/wheel barrowed it to the work site we set to, forming ourselves into 4 work groups. One group made a start clearing the west canal bank above the lock and lighting a fire to burn all the scrub that was removed, unfortunately the smoke from this slowly drifted across the canal to where the second group were clearing the east bank. (I was in the second group.) The work on the west bank was mainly cutting back Alders to give a 6 foot wide path along the side of the canal. This progressed quite rapidly for about the first 40 to 50 yards after which the chain saw was called in to remove some of the larger timber.
The smoke wafting over the water and us
Don making a start
on the bramble patch
On the east bank the first obstacle was a good sized patch of brambles directly behind the Environment Agency's water level monitoring box. It was just beyond here where its planned to put an overspill weir between the canal and the dyke to control the water level after the gates are installed. The whole area between the canal and the back dyke had to be cleared for about 10 yards. After the brambles it was into the young willows that had grown up from the root stocks that had been cut back in previous years. By the end of the day we had both cleared a good section of the bank, further on the east side that the west as the going got much easier the further we went.
A good stretch cleared. Looking back to the lock
you can see the smoke from the bonfire
Diana showing the
size of the stumps
Another team set to on the two large roots growing in
behind the lock walls, luckily the only damage they had caused to the
structure of the lock was lifting the concrete coping from the top of
the walls. At one point the concrete was well imbedded into the timber
and remained there after the stump was removed.
To remove the stumps the soil was dug back from around the roots and the
thicker root branches cut back with the chain saw. The Tirfor was then
attached to the top of the stumps and the base of a good tree and they
were winched out.
The strain is on the Tirfor as they continue
to hack away the roots
The final team started the day filling sandbags from the bulk bag of sand that had been delivered earlier in the week. These were then transported by wheelbarrow and used to form a coffer dam along one side of the dyke just by the foundations for the foot bridge. These footings are going to be enlarged so that a bridge capable of carrying a truck can be put across the dyke. This will allow diggers, dumpers etc access to the lock side and canal bank to construct the weir and continue with the lock restoration.
A welcome cup of tea was waiting for all the workers
During
the course of the day we had a few breaks for tea, we were able to boil
the water with a couple of electric kettles and the generator that we
had on site. Kettle boiling was controlled by the chairman of the
Ipswich IWA who can be seen in his green overalls smoking his
pipe, in red is Di who was serving the teas.
The work party leader
Kevin can be seen sitting on the end of the generator taking a well
earned cup of tea during the lunch break. Most of the other workers sat
in a line, far too long for me to get them all in along the lock wall.
Kevin found somewhere to sit off the damp ground
Every one enjoying lunch in the sun shine
One other small but essential job was carried out and that was to erect an information board on the foot bridge that crosses the head of the lock which has a map of the navigation and also a potted history.
Click the information board to see more photos of the lock area
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