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Progress

Inglesham in pictures

It’s been a busy summer at Inglesham Lock, western gateway to the Cotswold

Canals. Our photofeature shows how much has been achieved...

Inglesham 2017

2017 has seen a massive effort at Inglesham Lock, at the eastern end of the Cotswold

Canals. Over the year WRG & KESCRG volunteers have spent over 6200 hours working on the lock chamber and by the end of October we hope to have one side of the lock chamber restored.

Rick Barnes, Adam ‘Digger’ Morris and I would like to say a massive thank you to everyone involved this summer especially the leadership teams who helped run the camps, the people behind the scenes who have helped with logistics (Bungle in particular!) and to KESCRG for adopting the project and

supporting it throughout the year with weekend digs.

WRG & KESCRG will be back in 2018 - with the aim of restoring the rest of the lock chamber. Dates will be released in December. In the meantime here are some pictures to show just how much our volunteers have achieved in 2017.

Cheers

Jenny Black

To see how Inglesham Lock fits in with the rest of the Cotswold restoration, see the Cotswold Canals Fact File on page 8. ...Ed

Main chamber wall with rebuilding in progress, and complete. Another one to do next year.

Before-and-after shots of the lock ladder recess

(above) and the wing wall with bywash culvert (right). and (below) just a few of the people involved

Progress

continuing the long-running task of

re-lining the channel, while the Wey

Grand Union Wendover Arm

& Arun Canal Trust have

begun building a slipway

Wendover Arm

Channel lining and reconstruction:

During th Wendover Arm Trust’s July and

August Working Parties, work concentrated

on laying spoil on the banks and bed of the channel where WRG BITM had completed

completed block and coir roll laying in June.

As well as completing the above work, bank profiling was extended for another 15 metres and the waterproof Bentomat lining, hollow concrete blocks, solid concrete blocks and coir rolls laid ready for completing with spoil fill at the September working party.

On the first two days of the August working party, the opportunity was taken, while the weather was dry, to cut enough Bentomat into 4m and 20m lengths to ensure that there will be Bentomat for all lining work through to better weather in 2018.

Whitehouses pumping station site:

The latest news on the design and progress of the pseudo weir and wing walls to the

wharf wall at Whitehouses is that the design has been completed and is at present being costed. No firm date for this work has been agreed although a date of April / May next year has been suggested but attempts are being made to bring this forward to avoid clashing with Wendover Arm Trust’s work

that should have reached Whitehouses about that time.

Roger Leishman

Restoration Director Tel: 01442 874536

rwleishman@gmail.com

The Wey & Arun Canal Trust’s Northern and

Summit Working Party has been concentrating on finishing the Compasses Bridge

Progress

project at the Alfold entrance to the Dunsfold Park aerodrome and business complex. Various jobs have been completed over the

Wey & Arun

summer, such as construction of a bankside

retaining wall and concrete steps down to the

tion by moving equipment and surplus mate

landing stage, to finish off the Trust’s first full rials to the Trust’s Tickner’s Depot. The last

restoration project in Surrey. The site commajor concrete pour has taken place, signal

pound – containers, site cabins etc – has ling the beginning of the end of the project

been moved to a new site adjacent to the and much of the facing brickwork is com

new Thriscutt Slipway. That project will soon pleted. Work is taking place to complete the

be restarted, so that small boats will be able curved front of the top cill following the

to easily access what will be around 1¼ delivery of the ekki ‘bumping block’ to go on

miles of restored waterway. the front edge, and blue bull-nosed bricks

Completion of the slipway, which is Elsewhere on the top cill, the metal

being paid for by a legacy from the Thriscutt

frame and sluice and parts of the ground

family, will take up much of the autumn, paddles have been fitted to the lock. The

winter and spring. digging out of the winding hole to the north

The Northern and Summit Working of the lock provided the opportunity for re

Party, joined by the Newbury Working Party

certification of the group’s digger drivers.

Group, has also been working in the Trust’s The great heap of topsoil they produced will

Hunt Nature Park at Shalford, near where the eventually be used for the landscaping. With

canal joins the River Wey. They spent four the parapets of the new bridleway bridge

days installing bank protection and reinforcecomplete, the scaffolding could be removed

ment on the Cranleigh Waters stream where and the towpath level raised either side for

it passes through the park. Repairs were the bridge to be put into use.

necessary to banks which were damaged Elsewhere on the Wey & Arun, WACT’S

during the floods of 2013. This was a comHedgelaying Group has laid a grand total of

plex exercise involving the driving in of 360 yards of new hedge during its season.

timber piles that anchor the bank reinforceTheir work included creating 90 yards of

ment mesh and coir rolls and matting prehedge at Lock 10, where nine trees were

planted with native water plants. The job felled and replaced with 10 new ones as well

necessitated the construction of a temporary as more than 60 saplings. The season was

pond at the Compasses compound for stordue to resume in late September.

age of the planted materials.

Most of the bank

repairs are complete

and the volunteers will be back in the autumn to finish a section

where the large number of rocks in the river bed mean a rethink on tactics is required.

The Thursday and Sunday Group team working on the new Gennets Bridge Lock (GBL), south of Compasses, has also begun winding up its opera

WACT