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1st - 2nd October

Report by Martin Day

We had a weekend work camp with WRG London attending and we worked on the abutments of bridge 19 situated above lock12 at Fosse locks.

The concrete girders that had replaced the old swing bridge had been removed at the summer work camp. As there was not enough time to repair the abutments it was held over for later. The wish of London WRG to come for a visit was sprung upon us and so as bridge 19 was the only one we had paperwork for we decided on that.

All sorts of problems were thrown at us in so far as which mortar were we using and that we couldn’t use engineering bricks even though it called for them in BW’s Heritage spec. This was on the Friday morning where we had to place our order with our sponsor John Stevens builder’s merchant for all the materials. In the abutments were five sizes and colours of bricks so we knew it was going to be damn near impossible to make any sort of a job never mind a good one. We were then told that the bricks should after all be engineering grade B with no perforations or frogs to which John Stevens said “Oh we had better have a look up the yard to see what we can find”.

Well on the Saturday all the materials arrived at 08.30 and away we all went to our respective jobs. Some were working down stream under the Fosse Road Bridge Tirforing tree stumps up; others were working on 19’s bridge abutments, which turned out to be a mammoth task. For a start there were two sets of abutments, the original and a brick skin in front which we think was put there because the concrete beams weren’t long enough. We couldn’t completely skin it all again with a lovely new face because first, it would make the bridge hole too narrow and secondly we didn’t have enough bricks. Not having enough bricks turned out to be the buzzword instead of ‘Team working’, which I hate.

We tried – oh how we tried to find enough original bricks to rebuild the abutments. The holes in the wall were over a foot deep and had to have two courses to fill it. Below water line it wasn’t so bad using the new metric bricks, as they will be very strong and completely out of view. BUT when the London crew started replacing above the waterline amongst the other five different sizes and types of bricks they couldn't make a match.

It said in the Heritage spec that ‘sands should be blended from various suppliers to obtain the correct colour match’. Well we mixed, as near to the colours that were there and the ‘Heritage Pointing’ looked really good it was such a shame that the fluorescent orange metric bricks stuck out like sore thumbs. It was not our supplier’s fault they did a brilliant job supplying, at a moments notice, the type we required it, was that we couldn’t get any of our five types to their yard in time for a colour match. It is a shame but before the “ No engineering bricks “ announcement we were going to use some of our matched ones from our store at Woolsthorpe but we couldn’t – not having any large transport to get any down in time.

Because the bridge site was over 100 yards away from the materials drop we decided to mix at the drop point and barrow the mortar to the site. It turned very warm on the Sunday so mixes we thought were a little sloppy were in fact quite firm when we had finally trudged it to the site.

It is a huge job, logistics wise, so we have got to work there again with – hopefully the correct type, size, colour and quantity of bricks and a little less sunshine.

Many thanks to our sponsor John Stevens (Building Supplies Nottingham) who supplied materials. Mr Stevens visited us on Sunday to look at the work taking place .

At the moment our tools and materials are kept near Woolsthorpe but because of the distance between there and Cropwell Bishop where the continuation of work is to be completed we are looking for a secure base in the Cropwell area. If you know of anywhere we could use please contact: Colin 0115 9892248

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