Entry: 21st August 2017
When work is straightforward, it’s easy to make an impression – to look back at the end of the day/week, and see real progress. This was the case with rebuilding the lock chamber walls. Pouring concrete, laying new bricks and blocks of uniform size makes for rapid progress.
Rapid? We’re just into our third year in restoring this lock. Those of you with some knowledge of the canal, will know the whole 33 miles were built in just four years!
How were those navvies able to achieve this? Which ever way you look at it – it was a remarkable achievement. There were hundreds and hundreds of them of course, and boy, could they show you a day’s work! They were well paid and, they were skilled.
We do have some young volunteers, but it has to be said, many are of a certain age – I doubt many would cope with digging out, with pick and shovel; 12 cubic yards a day – every day – as navvies of old were not only capable of, it was expected.
A press cutting from (I think) The Stamford Mercury, the oldest newspaper in the country, told of a riot, when two navvies from the Grantham Canal were ‘locked up’.
Now, that’s 24 cubic yards of soil and rock each day which isn’t being dug. Add to this the camaraderie which existed between these largely lawless men – they were having none of it! So 200 of their workmates – went and got ’em out!
I don’t think we had a single bricklayer among our volunteers when we started – we’ve trained people on the job. We’ve also trained people in the use of heavy plant. These now have a qualification which is relevant on any construction site in the country.
We constantly have to liaise with our funders, heritage advisers, ecologists and our partners in the project; owners of the canal – the Canal and River Trust.
Locks are big sturdy things – but they were built to a price. The very clever design – using counterfortes to stabilise the lock chamber walls for example – meant fewer bricks would be needed. Over 200 years later, it is these counterfortes (think buttresses), which had failed on Lock 15.
We’ve used a different approach to rebuilding the lock chamber walls – it will look traditional when finished. If the canal’s design engineer, William Jessop, had employed this more substantial method of construction – the canal would never have been built – his price wouldn’t have been accepted!
The original bricks for these locks, bridges, lockkeepers cottages, and canal workshops at Woolsthorpe, were made in a brickworks by the side of the canal here. Women and children were often employed in this activity. It has been interesting to discover the finger marks of, possibly a child, in some of these bricks. These finger marks, likely formed, when handling the wet clay following molding, en-route for the kiln.
Rebuilding the locks is a major part of the project, but it’s not the only part. A requirement of the Heritage Lottery Fund – without whom we wouldn’t have been able to do the work – is community work. We’ve always been keen to do this – we need to demonstrate that we are doing even more!
Volunteers are involved in giving illustrated talks, and they visit schools and youth groups with canal related activities.
Volunteers have also been working with outside providers on a project to improve interpretation along the canal. This will take the form of four new benches, each with a carved map of the canal and local information. Each bench will be associated with a circular walk, which will have an accompanying leaflet, with information on our website too.
The archaeology of the lock structure has been recorded throughout.
Navvies of 200 years ago didn’t have to do any of this stuff!
We are pleased to welcome the Waterway Recovery Group to Lock 15 again – here for four weeks, and are on site as I write in August. I started my post by talking about making rapid progress – we’re now at the stage where we’re restoring the bits of the lock which were left standing: wing walls, thrust blocks, ground paddle chambers etc. This is the type of work which absorbs the time, when, after a day’s work, you look back at the little you appear to have achieved.
I’ll leave you with some pictures of the Waterway Recovery Group at Lock 15 Aug 2017.
…and, before I find my bike tyres deflated – I must fly the flag for our own Grantham Canal Society volunteers who work every day, Monday to Friday on this project 🙂
Author & upload TJ
