SUSSEX OUSE RESTORATION TRUST NEWS
Vision Document Launched!
The Trust's "Vision Document" was officially launched on March 27th at the John Harvey Tavern in Lewes. An excellent turn-out of 20 members and 30 invited guests joined together to listen to a short formal presentation by SORT Chairman Bob Draper. This was followed by a buffet lunch during which there was ample opportunity for members and guests to question your Committee and discuss with each other the challenges and opportunities raised by the Vision and SORT's plans for conservation and restoration of the Sussex Ouse Navigation. Invited guests included local County, District and Parish Councillors, the Environment Agency, Sussex Wildlife Trust, Sussex Ouse Conservation Society, angling clubs, Ramblers Association and many more.
The next step is to circulate the Vision as widely as possible to engage with all interested local parties. This will include individual presentations or talks where appropriate. SORT then intends to form a partnership with all the local bodies expressing an interest in moving the project forward. This will hopefully lead to sufficient funding being found for an initial feasibility study to show the engineering feasibility of the project and to prove the economic and social benefits that will derive from it. That will then allow for a full environmental impact study to be done to ensure that any works undertaken are not detrimental to the long-term biodiversity and ecology of the river corridor.
Printed copies of our Vision document may be requested from our Secretary (see our Contacts page). Alternatively, there is a downloadable version available in pdf format. Please note that this is FOUR MEGABYTES in size to provide a reasonable quality of image resolution. On a dial-up connection this will take a minimum of 12 minutes to download. Download via this link.
Restoration Work Continues at Isfield Lock
By kind permission of landowner John Sclater, conservation / restoration work will restart at Isfield Lock on various week-ends from late April until mid-September 2008, plus a few Thursdays. Following completion of the removal of the bottom gate remains and all the silt from the lock in 2007, work this year will concentrate on the conservation and renovation of the east wall of the lock. The early stages this year will include making good the scoured invert area below the bottom gate recesses and the erection of scaffolding to allow for safe working on the east wall.
Work days planned so far are:
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Via Vuggles Farm entrance:
Thu. 17th April - initial visit to pump out lock and prepare site
Sat. 19 / Sun. 20 April - erect scaffolding to East wall -
Via Plantation entrance:
Thu 1st May - prepare invert scour holes for concreting
Sat. 3 / Sun. May - concreting invert scour holes
Thu. 8 May - check invert repair, remove temporary dam, move hoist and re-route electrical supply cable to East side
Sat. 10 / Sun. 11 May - start work on East wall cutting out dead bricks, drilling and stitching
Thu 15 May - continue above tasks
Thu. 5th June - all materials to site for KESCRG week-end
Sat. 7 / Sun. 8 June - KESCRG visit working week-end
Further detailed lists of dates will be published here once they are set. We will be delighted to see any new working members there on these dates, but please contact our project manager, Paul Morris, via e-mail at morris_paul @ btinternet.com, or by telephone 01435 863683, before you come along so that we can give you precise details of times and location.
Previous work parties have achieved the following progress so far:
The lock chamber is now being pumped out again into the adjacent ox-bow following winter rains and floods. Surrounding vegetation has been cleared and is kept in check by periodic strimming. The site was flooded out at least twice during the 2006/7 winter period following a lot more rain than in the previous two years. The water level settles at about 8 feet in the lock chamber and now that a number of cubic metres of silt have already been removed, it takes quite a lot longer to do the initial pump-out before work can start afresh this season. |
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Isfield during initial draining (127KB) |
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We have now had five week-ends of earth moving from the lock tail, initially using the spoil to infill the lower cut channel to create an earth dam to help prevent a re-occurrence of last year's summer flooding. The invert below the bottom gates has been exposed to reveal a silt depth of some 2 metres (6.5 feet) to be removed from the chamber as opposed to the 1 metre assessed in previous investigations. Once this had been established, it was evident that the proposed access ramp into the lock would be far too steep to allow safe and reliable working from the originally-proposed entry point from the adjacent footpath. It was therefore necessary to extend the length of the slope to reduce the angle and to achieve this a new entry point was prepared some 15 metres further down the cut. This entailed the removal of more spoil than was originally envisaged and so also required more plant to be hired in, increasing the cost and extending the time scale of our first year's proposed work schedule into 2007. |
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Isfield Lock tail excavation (185KB) |
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In view of this, we revised our 2006 work target to be the completion of the access ramp only, including the spreading of hardcore. This was a more realistic objective, giving us time to accumulate additional funds for the main excavation of the lock in 2007. Full excavation of the chamber also requires shoring up materials to be obtained for the West wall as, with the additional depth of the chamber now apparent, the possibility of collapse of this wall is increased as the silt is removed.
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Excavation so far has revealed training walls on each side of the downstream lock entrance together with remains of vertical buffer timbers still in-situ. The invert appears to be a rare mix of stone and brick construction. A timber fore-bay has been uncovered in front of the bottom gates - this may be a unique feature of the Sussex Ouse locks. A number of other pieces of worked timber have been recovered that we believe may be parts of the original lock gates. We have now found substantial remains of both bottom gates still standing upright in-situ in the silt to about half their original height - everything above the silt line having rotted. We have therefore brought a qualified archaeologist on board to assist us with fully excavating and documenting these other possibly unique artifacts, together with the other important features of the lock. |
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Isfield Lock invert located (114KB) |
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With quite a small membership, SORT currently has very restricted funds. Specific funds donated for restoration purposes have now been exhausted and we are starting to commit general funds to this restoration phase. We have a limited ability to do this taking into account other commitments for this year. So it is now time for that canal restoration tradition - an appeal for more Members!
An application form
is available here.
Or if anyone out there has at their disposal scaffolding, boards, Acrow props and so on that we can use over an extended period for shoring up the lock walls whilst we work on their renovation, please get in touch.
Material Copyright © 2002/8 Sussex Ouse Restoration Trust