This time we meet the guys working at Lock 24 in a video by Paul Marshall, with Peter and Adrian explaining what the Trust is doing and why. Simon Mepsted tells how he became a 'Modern-day Navvy' and Tony Cadwallader reports on progress on Pound 25 & Lock 24 in June.
My name is Simon Mepsted. I am 62 years old, married with two children and grandpa to Teddy and Henry. I’m a keen trail runner and a fan of Leicester Tigers Rugby Club. I retired in March 2020 having worked as a factory manager for most of my working life. Between lockdowns in 2020 I started to volunteer at Blithfield Reservoir, helping with habitat maintenance, I found this very rewarding and soon realised I could easily volunteer for more than one day a week.
Around
January 2021 I came across the Lichfield & Hatherton Canals Restoration
Trust on Twitter (https://twitter.com/LHCRT1)
and had a look at their website https://www.lhcrt.org.uk
Having used canal towpaths for many years for walks with our dogs, family walks and of course taking advantage of the flat running they offer, I thought the LHCRT could be a great way of giving something back and help in a small way to add yet more miles of beautiful canal to the existing network.
Having done my compulsory Health and Safety Induction and purchased a nice new shinny pair of steel toe cap boots I was ready to go! I have initially agreed to volunteer every Wednesday and see how my body copes with the manual labour. I was a bit nervous on my first day which I spent at Lock 24 not really knowing what to expect, but I was soon put a ease by a great bunch of volunteers who were all a similar age to me. The fact I had not had any previous experience with building a canal didn’t matter. I was given the task of reclaiming the bricks that had been taken out of the old lock. Not the most exciting job but as new bricks can be up to a £1 each it is essential work. Whilst standing happily chipping away at the lime mortar I couldn’t help but think of the Navvies that had laid these bricks some 200 years before and the tools they would have used. They certainly did not have a mini digger, dumper truck and electric drills, it was all done by hand, but what they lacked in equipment they made up with shear numbers of people working on each section.
I was also struck by the number of people already
using the route for recreation, dog walkers, runners, friends out for a stroll
etc.
I can’t wait for my next day volunteering, I may well jot down a few notes in a
week or two if anybody’s interested just to let you know how it’s going.
Thanks for reading!
Yours, The Modern-Day Navvy.
Simon Mepsted
We had to abandon the concreting to Pound 25 because Covid had reduced the funds available, so we shall take this up again when things improve.
So the team set about taking down the towpath side of old lock 24 as it had to be widened towards the Cricket Lane end to enable boats to exit once a retaining wall was built alongside the cottage just beyond the lock. We attacked the wall with lump hammers and chisels, and also had the use of a Kango Hammer but it was tough going. I said to John Mee at the outset, that at least we knew what we would be doing for the next two years. We appealed to Steve Webster and he managed to obtain a hydraulic breaker which fitted on to the mini excavator, and now Adrian Sturgess started having a great time knocking ten bells out of that wall.
As at the end of June, we now have the wall down to the top of the 'big pipe' that lies through the old lock, and a section at the bottom end now exposes the lock bed and from which Roger and his merry men has now started re-building the lock wall to the new line. Great work by Hugh's team who have been working on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, together with my team including Brian Williams, John Mee and Brian Golding together with Adrian. The photograph below shows the start of the new wall and its foundation, and if you look carefully, you can see a yellow mark on the old wall which indicates the height of the top of that wall which will be towpath level along that section.
It should be said that old lock 24 will no longer be a lock, as we have to continue the lower level up to Cricket Lane where it will pass under a new bridge to be provided by Perssimon, and then the new lock 24 will be built just beyond the new bridge. Rick, the brick, with George Cross has started repairing to top of the wall on the roadside, which is proceeding, and Paul Nicholson and Dave Dwyer have cleared the overgrowth all along there to enable them to work, and to generally tidy it up.
Tony Cadwallader June 30th, 2021.
10 June. The guys are dismantling more of the original Lock 24 brickwork. Underneath here is the dreaded 'big pipe'. This Lock was originally excavated in 2006 but filled in again for safety and protection.
More on that here https://www.lhcrt.org.uk/work2006.htm
Photos: Paul & Bev Marshall
