Tamworth Road Narrows
It’s been an interesting couple of months at old Lock 24, so much so that you
can barely recognise that it was formally a lock. The old south wall has been
deconstructed down to invert level and a new wall has been toothed into the
lower lock opening on the South side.
One of the original quoin blocks has been fitted to act as a ‘rubbing strip’ for
boats entering the narrows and some fifteen metres of new South wall have been
constructed. The original bricks and have been reused where possible.
The best bricks have gone into the front wall, the damaged bricks have been
used to form shuttering for the back wall, whilst the concrete in-fill goes off and
hardens. The good half bricks have been used to form a dry-stone wall to the
bank. The remaining brick rubble has been placed into the concrete in-fill in
order to use less concrete and even the mortar scalpings from the brick cleaning
tables have been used as the base layer to the new towpath.
The wall has been ‘topped out’ with a soldier course of blue engineering bricks
to resist any impact damage from boats and because these new bricks are far
less porous. The blue bricks finish the wall off really nicely.
The new north wall has been started from the East (or high) side of the lock. At some point in the future it is going to have to be toothed back into the old North lock wall but for now we have just started the construction towards the top end of the former lock. Within the former lock there is obviously sufficient wall footings and foundation for the wall to remain stable, whether the lock were full of water or empty. However, beyond the former lock gate (on the (West or) high side) brickwork only extends down some 1.5 metres, below this there is no foundation. The wall is literally sitting on sandstone. As the lock will no longer be used as a lock we are bringing the canal through at Pound 25 level (some 2.5 metres lower) in order to get under Cricket Lane (some 200 yards to the West).
We have therefore had to stabilise the lock wall and the wing wall where it forms the boundary to the garden of the cottage - before excavating for the new channel depth. To this end Peter Buck (our Engineering Director) designed a series of buttresses. The supporting piers for these buttresses each stem from the new North wall and encompass the dreaded ‘big pipe’ which has had to be ‘factored into’ the new North wall in this narrows section. The buttresses effectively act to hold the base of the original wall in place. We have now built five of the six buttresses (as of mid-October 2021) and so we have stabilised the gate wall and the closest sections of the wing wall.
As a feature ‘Rick the Brick’ is constructing a column and rail wall (using old bricks and scaffolding poles) atop the former lock wall. This will provide handrail protection should anyone climb onto the original wall. Some thought needs to be given regarding what we do next because Roger, who has constructed the new South wall, is working so quickly that he is rapidly catching up with our North wall workings, and we need to maintain some separation of work sites for reasons of safety and in order to provide machine access. The North wall just needs a single row of blue bricks to finish it off.
Mike Babb
Our place in the world can be located using just three simple words:
What3words ///learns.organs.then
How does 'What3Words' work?
Every 3 metre square of the world has been given a unique combination of
three words. They can be used for e-commerce, delivery, navigation, emergencies
and locating precisely where we are on our canal.
To see where we are and learn more visit https://what3words.com/learns.organs.then
We had the five-tonne digger in for some much-needed repairs. The
team had to replace the drive sprockets as they had worn down. The pins
and bushes were replaced at the bucket end of the boom. And finally it had a
new wear edge added to the dozer blade as the last one had completely worn
away.
All work was carried out in-house by our team but the parts were £300.
A big
thank you to our Facebook friends who have raised almost the full amount.
