Finally, Spencer Greystrong reports from the River Gipping, otherwise known as the Ipswich & Stowmarket Navigation
Progress
...and the River Gipping
River Gipping: Baylham Lock 2009 cubic metres at a time, left to set under
water (because we couldn t keep the site The Trust has only been in existence for 2 totally dry for 6 weeks) and then pump out years but before that the Ipswich branch of again and start the next section. IWA had produced some plans that would During the first camp the weather was see a major step forward in the restoration glorious and the first team from WRG under of the Ipswich & Stowmarket Navigation. leader Liz Wilson [see report in Navvies 236] Colin Turner was persuaded to come out of managed to get everything ready for the retirement one last time and take on the role Friday concrete pour in plenty of time. Beof Working Party Organiser so we decided to cause the lock has numerous springs we had go ahead. to construct a concrete sump and attach The work at Baylham Lock involved plastic pipes to it which would eventually run taking down 15 metres of lock wall, removthe length of the lock and feed all the spring ing 60 cubic metres of soil from behind the water to the sump. These pipes had hunwall, breaking out and removing 10 cubic dreds of holes drilled in them; they were metres of concrete from the invert, reformthen surrounded by gravel, covered with a ing the invert at its correct level using 10 polythene sheet and finally covered with a cubic metres of new concrete, rebuilding the 50mm layer of concrete. I made that sound lock wall, pouring another 15 cubic metres of easy but they also had to remove all the old concrete behind the wall and finally replacing concrete and then dig down 200 mm and the soil behind the wall. All this to be done remove thick glutinous clay before they could in 6 weeks commencing July 12! start putting in the pipes. Because the River Gipping is very prone Come Friday, the day of the concrete to flooding it was essential that the work was pour, we had the dumpers standing by (the carried out as quickly as possible and in the site is only accessible over two bridges with supposed driest time of the year. To get the an 8 tonne limit on each so the ready-mix work done we asked WRG if they could had to come in ½ a tonne at a time in the provide two full camps, one at the start and dumpers). Colin had made it very clear that one at the end of the period. We also asked the lorry had to be with us by 9.30am. FiLondon WRG if they could run a weekend camp between the two. Luckily both organisations said yes so using Roy Sutton s engineering report and recommendations, Colin started the detailed planning. Although we needed to remove the old concrete from the bottom of the lock Roy advised us that if we did the whole lot in one go there was every possibility that the wall next to the mill could start sliding into the lock bringing a 200 year old listed structure down with it. Our 2 year old Trust would probably not grow up to be 3 years old if that happened so the work had to be done in three stages. That meant that the replacement Setting up for the concrete pour, first week... concrete could only be poured 6
page 27