Newsletter Issue 13 November 2015

Gabions a go go at Pipps Ford Work on the bywash at Pipps Ford is gathering apace as the photos inside this issue demonstrate. Spencer Greystrong and Colin Turner ponder on plans for a cage to catch a giant Coypu that is terrorising the River Gipping. Only jesting! They are making one of the gabions that will be used downstream of the bridge to create a river bank.

Interest in UK

canals continues to grow Over recent months there has been a number of programmes about canals on the television. This is great news for canal enthusiasts as it emphasises their importance in the industrial growth of the United Kingdom. In BBC4’s ‘Canals– The Making of a Nation’ Liz McIvor looks at who built the nation's canal network, who funded it, those who worked on it and how they were regenerated following WWII. It is still possible to watch these highly informative programmes by going to the following link www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0689qmh

Britain's relationship with the canals of the Industrial Revolution has lasted for some 300 years. In that time they've moved from being vital trade routes to ignored and forgotten relics, but in the past few decades canals have enjoyed a resurgence. The River Gipping Trust is playing its part in restoring and maintaining our nations heritage.

I would like to express my thanks to John Ford for the excellent photographs he takes, to maintain an accurate record of our progress. For the latest information and more pix visit our website.

On pages three and four you will see a montage of photographs taken by Charles Stride a River Gipping Trustee. He spent a very enjoyable afternoon cruising the River Orwell and out into the estuary on the Lady Orwell which is run by Orwell River Cruises,

Contributions from readers are also very welcome as these add diversity to the newsletters content. So if you feel like expressing your views on a particular topic that is relevant to the RGT please get in contact.

Les Howard

(les.jan@hotmail.co.uk)

Phil Whittaker by the bridge at Pipps Ford

PROGRESS REPORT ON PIPPS FORD

From Martin Bird, RGT Restoration Manger

Here we are in a glorious Autumn, up to our necks in mud again and still

working hard at Pipps Ford. We had a very constructive series of meetings

with the environment agency in the early Summer thanks to the discovery of

a live water-vole burrow, right in the middle of the river bank where we had

planned the entry to the bywash. The result has in fact been a benefit to us

as the EA have agreed

to a shorter bywash

route, meaning less

excavation and earth

moving than would have

been otherwise

required.

The Summer , when

many of our volunteers

take a break and we

tend to be a little short

handed ,was taken up

largely with repairing

the cracked lock wall

and putting our newest recruit, Nigel, to work breaking up concrete with a

sledgehammer. In between we spent some time logging up timber for the

landowner in return for a contribution to our new digger!

The digger ( a small Kubota, but big enough to be of use in many different

locations) arrived in September after an interesting journey from Glasgow,

towed by our chairman, and was

immediately put to use to such an

effect that the centre line of the new

bywash has been excavated to full

depth for a width of 3m, and now we

have the job of “losing” the

excavated earth on the adjacent

land, before John can come back

and grade the banks to the required

35 degrees, and create more mud to

be moved around.

John Last our expert digger driver Making a start on exca-vating the main channel of the bywash with our new toy

Ian Williams checking levels. He is the one not on the digger

Phil Whittaker by the bridge at Pipps Ford

But all this mud moving and

concrete breaking has meant that

we have been able to push ahead

with installing a row of Gabions

between the new footbridge and

the weir and at least part of

Simon’s garden should return to

looking more domestic than

industrial before the winter starts.

For those interested in the wildlife,

we are still seeing signs of water

vole presence and the raft we installed to check the presence of mink has

remained clear of any trace of that particular animal, but has been regularly

visited by an otter who has left footprints and copious spraint.

The work for the Autumn and into the winter period ill be to complete the

gabion installations, and finish off,

as much as possible, the area

below the footbridge and above

the weir. While the weather

remains dry, we will carry on with

the excavation work on the

bywash route as well.

As always, volunteers are

welcome every Wednesday, and

most second Saturdays of every

month.

The bywash awaiting profiling and removal of excavated materials.

Site downstream of bridge being prepared for the installation of gabions.. See below

Phil Whittaker by the bridge at Pipps Ford

Top left The bottom layer of gabions being tied in. Top right Team members inspect their handiwork. Bottom right: Filling the gabions with carefully selected lumps of concrete to create a dry stone wall effect.

Site upstream of bridge being prepared for the installation of gabions.. See below

COLIN TURNER’S REFLECTIONS ON HIS

INVOLVEMENT WITH THE IWA AND RGT

This is the third part of a series of articles written by RGT

Trustee Colin which charts the restoration work on the river.

More to follow in future newsletters.

2002

This time the task was to repair the accommodation bridge that spanned the tail of Creeting Lock. One of the lower spandrel walls was collapsing outwards taking the parapet with it. We had demolished part of the parapet on top of the wall when we first started work on the site, as it looked to dangerous for anyone to work below it.

Because of this, to the inconvenience of the land owner, the EA had put a ‘no vehicles’ restriction on the bridge instead of repairing it.

Late on the Saturday, before the start of the camp, as we were preparing the site for the camp, we pulled out an elder bush that was growing in one of the approaches to the bridge and up with the roots came a green plastic tracer strip with the inscription ‘Caution Fibre Optic Cables Below’ and a contact telephone number. The land owner confirmed that fibre optic cables of a national network passed over the bridge. I spent an anxious night worrying what we were going to find when we started work on the bridge, as the bridge was almost the only work that we had for the campers to do. When we exposed the cables it was no problem as the cables were laid in a plastic tube at the root of the downstream parapet, under a cement benching, so we could work around them. I had vaguely wondered about that benching in the past as there was not a matching one on the other wall now I knew why it was there.

Due to high water level at the start of the camp, we could not pump out the lock for the first two days of the camp and so had more volunteers than work places to occupy them so the decision was made to demolish both parapets to the level of the arch instead as they had been crudely rebuilt at some time using a motley assortment of bricks, Both parapet walls had to be demolished to the level of the arch. By now we had broken the back of the work at Creeting Lock, there remained much to do but no large tasks nor a further project in prospect that would justify hosting further canal camps so our own volunteers continued the work. We also had a week end visit by London WRG with 8 brick layers that moved things on a bit.

The gales in October brought more problems, a large chestnut tree, the next one to the one that we had cut down, was blown down. It brought down the 11kv power lines that termi-nate on site and the main trunk of the tree landed dead centre on our dump-er truck. I though it would be a write off but when the tree was removed it was found that the damage was mini-mal, which was fortunate, since we had decided to sell it, and we had found a buy-er for it, we would not have been able to use it after December as it did not com-ply with new health & safety rules for construction sites. The gales were followed by floods, a tree got stuck in the lock that caused a build up of debris that took us a morning with grappling hooks, chain hoist and a pull from a four wheel drive car to remove it.

2003

In the Spring of 2003 a visit by The Newbury working Party Group made up for brick laying time we had lost in the winter due to frost.

The tree stump left after the rest of the fallen tree was removed was tackled with fire and digging so that the area could be landscaped.

When we first start-ed at Creeting lock there were two large concrete plinths, one each side of the lock, that had supported a Bailey type bridge that had been used by gravel lorries to remove the gravel extracted from the field beside the lock during the building of the dual carriage way A14.

The brick accommodation bridge was far too weak to take the weight of loaded gravel lorries.

When the plinths were removed it was found that the coping stones in that area were missing. There were some suitable stones beside Sharmford Lock that had been left as seating when the National Rivers Authority rebuilt the lock, finishing it off with bricks with rounded corners instead of coping stones. As there was now a proper seat beside the lock we thought that they were re-dundant and obtained permission the take them. These stones are 12”x 24”x 48” of solid sand stone. I had made a low truck to enable us to slide the stones on by means of scaffold tubes, one end of which were placed on the truck the other end on the ground in front of the stone to be moved. The stone was then rolled on to the tubes by means of levers and likewise slid along the tubes until the stone was on the truck. Then it was just a case of trundling it down the path to the bottom of the farmer’s field where they could be picked up and put on our flat bed trailer. At least that was the theory, as we moved the first stone the solid rubber tyres on the truck wheels got larger and larger as they were rolled out by the weight of the stone until they flipped of the rim altogether, we finished that trip with a lot of brute force as the wheels were now of too small a diameter to clear the flanges of the steel channels that we were using to smooth the way over the rough ground. So we abandoned work for the day for a re-think about the truck.

Roger Brown came up with some more wheels that were ex. RAF bomb trolley wheels, surly these would be strong enough. They were fitted with pneumatic tyres, one had a slow puncture, the other would not hold air at all. To my surprise our local tyre centre had the right tube in stock so with both tyres holding air we had another try.

The next stone was moved according to plan, when we loaded the third one it was noticed that the tyre with the slow puncture was flat, it was pumped up to a bit over pressure and off we went again. BANG, it sounded as if someone had fired a shot, the tyre had burst and that wheel was now of smaller diameter that the one that it had replaced, stuck! What to do? Then someone had the bright idea of removing the remains of the tyre and sliding a scaffold tube under the rim to run it like a railway, it worked a treat, it ran easier than with the tyre on. So by the end of the day we had all four stones on the farmer’s field. Time to clear up and go home.

When I had spoken to the farmer about moving the stones across his field he had offered to pick them up with the forks on his tractor to load them on our trailer, this he did for the first two, at the start of our next work party, the other two he took to his farm yard where it would be easier to load. This just left two long lengths of steel channel to pick up from the field in which there were about 50 cows and a bull.

When the farmer had been there the bovine beasts were busy with the feed that he had just provided, when we went back later we became the focus of attention. They formed a semicircle around us and some started to snuffle and lick Chard Wadley’s brand new Jeep, so he shooed them off, the bull did not like his ‘ladies’ treated in this way and put his head down and pawed the ground in a threatening manner. ‘Let’s get out of here’ said Chard and jumped into the Jeep, as my door was on the same side as the bull I leaped on top of the channels on the trailer and we drove up the field accompanied by the heard galloping alongside of us. We drove out of the field through a gap in the fence formed by a removable section of barbed wire, the heard stopped just short of the fence but I still had to replace this section with the bull still pawing the ground close by. The things we do for water-ways restoration!

These stones did the job of replacing the missing ones and by the end of 2003 most of the coping stones were fitted.

We also repaired and sealed up the old sluice that had fed the by-pass channel around the lock. During the winter we completed work on the south inlet culvert and the landscaping on the south side of the lock. We made a start on the north culvert, where we had previously removed the roots of the tree that we had cut down, rebuilding the culvert arch and replacing the wall to restore it to the state it was in at the time the lock was listed.

After May1st our land drainage consent permitted us to fit an extra stop plank so we were able to pump out the lock The bottom stop planks had been leaking, so we built a dam to stop the water back feeding into the lock from down stream, carried out remedial work on the stop planks, repaired the invert under the bridge and fitted safety ladders in the ladder recesses that we had cut previously. We also re-moved the rusted remains of the old tie bars that linked the coping stones made and fitted new ones, these had to be leaded in with molten lead like the originals. That left all those small, time consuming, jobs that had been left in favour of the big jobs that really show progress.

With the work on Creeting Lock nearly finished and with no further project in the offing we spent time clearing the river channel between Creeting and Bosmere Locks of overhanging trees, mostly willows that were rooting into the river. The by-pass channel around the lock had been eliminated by the gravel extraction excava-tions that had created a lake in the field beside the lock. The lake, fed by ground water, and the surrounding meadows are now managed as a private wild life re-serve.

Now nutrient rich river water, leaking through and over the sluice that had con-trolled the flow into the channel was entering the lake, causing an alga bloom to form on the lake in summer. We repaired and sealed up the old sluice to prevent this from happening. To be continued.

Top Left Majority of the team involved in the restoration of the lock.

Other photos, illustrate various stages of the restoration work.

The barge YARE was built by Orvis & Fuller at St Clements Shipyard, Ipswich in 1871 and named after the River Yare. She joined a fleet of thirty Gipping barges carrying agricultural, commercial and domestic supplies. Her principal cargo was agricultural fertilisers for Packard and Fison. YARE was one of the last barges to be employed on the Ipswich-Stowmarket run. In 1933 she became a houseboat at Pin Mill. She was then bought by Jack Haste in 1962 for a very low price after some damage has been caused by flooding. For the past 45 years the barge has provides many enjoyable days for the family and Mr Haste hosted many weekends for the Ipswich Scouts. She has changed very little from her first conversion and her unique interior has been retained. A solid fuel stove provides warmth for a cosy atmosphere and a wind generator supplies power for the batteries. 137 years old YARE is the only Gipping barge left intact. She is recorded in the vernacular category of the Maritime Heritage Vessels Fleet List kept at Greenwich Maritime Museum. The barge is situated on the "Saltings" approximately 600 yards from the "Butt & Oyster Public House" at Pin Mill on a walk from Pin Mill to the Royal Harwich Yacht Club at Woolverstone. The location of the barge is idyllic with views across, up and down the River Orwell which are almost unsurpassed in the locality. YARE''S hull is carvel built, fastened with treenails and iron nails. She has a bluff bow and stern with a plumb straight stem. She has retained her original structure and still floats. She was sold subject to contract for £65,000

HISTORIC GIPPING BARGE SOLD AS

HOLIDAY HOME

The late Jack Haste a legend in the sailing barge world

Phil Whittaker by the bridge at Pipps Ford

The RGT received fantastic coverage in the October issue of Suffolk Magazine. Feature writer Lindsay Want spent a day working with the volunteers to get some real hands on experience. Pop out and get your copy it is a good read.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE

RIVER GIPPING

The River Gipping rises from a small spring near the radio mast at Mendlesham but it gets its name from the village of Gipping close by. It is joined by several small streams and the larger Rattlesden River at Stowmarket. It becomes the tidal River Orwell at Ipswich. According to the first edition of Hollinshed's Chronicles dated 1577 the river from "Bacton Urus" near Hartismere all the way to the sea was originally named the Ure. Legend has it that mariners knew of a very deep pit or well in the river at Ipswich which they called the Ure-well. This pit is believed to have been near the present docks. Joan Blaeu's Atlas Maior of 1665 names the river from Rattlesden to the sea as the Orwell but gives the name Gipping to the stretch above Stowmarket. The village of Ratesdana (Rattlesden) was named from the Danish rates

meaning boat and doenas meaning Dane suggesting that the Ure was navigable at least from the 9th century. The Saxon Chronicles for AD 866 state:- This year came a large heathen army into England, and fixed their winter-quarters in East- Anglia, where they were soon horsed; and the inhabitants made peace with them. This area features again in the Anglo Saxon chronicles because in the year

AD991 we read :- This year was Ipswich plundered; and very soon afterwards was Alderman Britnoth slain at Maidon. In this same year it was resolved that tribute should be given, for the first time, to the Danes, for the great terror they occasioned by the sea-coast. That was first 10,000 pounds. This money became known as Danegelt and was, in effect, protection money. It didn't help much because the same thing happened again around the Ipswich area in AD993 and AD1010. It has been suggested that Caen stone was brought from Normandy, up the

Orwell and then to Bury St. Edmunds to rebuild the Abbey over the period 1070 to 1095. In his History of Stowmarket (1844) the Rev AGH Hollingsworth quotes from the English poet John Lydgate (c1370 - c1451) as follows :-

In seyne and twenty wynters ye may seen A new church he did edifye. Ston brought from Kane out of Normandye By the se, and set up on the strande At Ratlysdene, and carried forth be lande. Lydgate wrote this verse in the year 1434, some 350 years after the alleged event. The stone for the abbey was actually procured from the fine quarries of Barnack, Northamptonshire, which belonged to the abbot of Peterborough, through the direct mandate of William the Conqueror, who also ordered that the usual tolls should be remitted for its conveyance. In any case, if it had come from Caen it would have been far easier to move the stone from Normandy via the Great Ouse and the River Lark rather than the Orwell.

BY SPENCER GREYSTRONG

Handford Hall, 7 Arch Bridge and the Great Eastern Railway Painted around 1 865 by Thomas Smythe and displayed on the RGT web site by kind permission of the Colchester and Ipswich Museums Service.

Courtesy Suffolk Mills Group

In 1567 Sir Thomas Gresham built what he called the 'Burse' in Cornhill, London, designed to rival the 'Bourse' in Antwerp. This building was renamed the Royal Exchange by Queen Elizabeth in 1570. The roof timbers for this building came from trees felled on Sir Thomas's estate at Ringshall. The trees were taken to Battisford Tye common and sawpits dug out in order to create timbers for the roof structure. This roof framework was taken by water to London. In 1634 the river was used to transport one of the bells of Stowmarket church from Ipswich after it had been recast. This particular bell weighed 5 cwt. (250kgs). The first modern attempt to make the river navigable occurred in 1719 when 'the chief Inhabitants of the Town [of Stowmarket]. and several Justices of the Peace, Gentlemen, Tradesmen and Freeholders' presented a petition to Parliament seeking leave to introduce a bill in the next session.. At the same time three other petitions from the great and good of Ipswich were presented against the navigation. Parliament decided to remit all these petitions to a committee for a final decision. Interestingly, the Stowmarket petition has the following words included - 'the River Orwell, which runneth from the said Town of Stowmarket to the Town and Port of Ipswich anciently a navigable River' which reinforces the notion that the river was called the Orwell all the way from the sea. The South Sea Company collapses. It should be borne in mind that the petition from Stowmarket was made at the height of the financial fever known as the South Sea Bubble. Investors were desperate to place their money in any sort of undertaking and in 1719 there were numerous bills proposed to make rivers navigable. In fact, the only one that failed to make its way through the Parliamentary process was the one for the Orwell and perhaps this was no bad thing as the South Sea Bubble collapsed in spectacular fashion in 1720 leaving thousands penniless as they had borrowed vast sums in order to buy South Sea shares. Parliament agrees to the Navigation In 1789 a new bill was introduced into Parliament and this time it was successful. In 1790 a Board of Trustees was appointed to administer the Stowmarket Navigation after the Act of Parliament had received the Royal assent. The act authorised the trustees to raise £14,300 and an extra £6000 just in case. Following the discovery of numerous errors in the original survey and poor workmanship by the first contractor (who was sacked) John Rennie was asked to carry out a fresh survey in 1791. He found that three locks had already been constructed with turf and timber and recommended that the remainder should be brick and stone. He estimated the total additional costs to be £12,350 so the trustees had to seek Parliamentary approval to raise a further £15,000 to complete the work. The total rise of the river from Ipswich to Stowmarket is 90 feet and 15 locks were constructed to overcome it in the 16 miles of navigation.

Courtesy Suffolk Mills Group

Badley Mill Courtesy Suffolk Mills Group

The Navigation was opened on the 14th September 1793 but several parts were found to be poorly built and damage caused by severe flooding in the winter of 1794 meant a lot more work (and more money) was needed to finish the job properly. Nothing happened about a link to Bury St Edmunds Whilst producing his report in 1791 John Rennie was also asked to give his opinion on a proposal to extend the Navigation from Stowmarket to the River Lark at Bury St Edmunds but nothing more was heard of that. A tonnage charge of 1d per ton per mile was levied for use of the navigation from Stowmarket to Ipswich but a halfpenny per ton per mile in the opposite direction. There was a minimum charge equal to a 35 ton load thus making the charge for a round trip £3 -10 shillings (£3.50p). A 30-40 ton horse drawn lighter completed the journey in about 8 hours. The main cargo was manure which travelled toll free, coal, gun cotton, corn and hops. In the first full year of uninterrupted trade (y/e July 1795) the total tolls received were £937 50p and the estimated expenses for that year were £380. The effect on transport costs between Ipswich and Stowmarket following the opening of the navigation were dramatic, with the carriage of a chaldron of coal reduced by four shillings (20p). A London chaldron held about 1.4 tonnes. The arrival of the railways heralded the canal’s decline In 1846 the railway arrived and with it a large decline in water-borne trade. The Trustees sought Parliamentary approval to lease the navigation to the Eastern Union Railway for 42 years. In 1888 when the lease ended the navigation was returned to the Trustees along with £2000 compensation as it was in such a poor condition. After 1932, with no income to meet their maintenance liabilities under the Act that established the navigation, the Trustees applied for a Revocation Order. The business was wound up at the final meeting of the Trustees in 1934. At this time all navigation rights were extinguished and the river bed was passed back to the riparian owners along the waterway. The Environment Agency look after the water course but their primary responsibility is flood control.

After closure in 1934 there followed many years of neglect, which resulted in the navigation becoming impassable and in some places, little better than an open drain.

The Ipswich Branch of the Inland Waterways Association started restoration work on the River in the 1970s.In 1994 work commenced to restore Bosmere Lock followed by Creeting Lock, work that took ten years. The continuation of this work is now being undertaken by the River Gipping Trust and work on the lock next to Baylham Mill is now complete apart from the installation of lock gates.

The RGT is currently working at Pipps Ford, restoring the original river course round the lock, rebuilding the bridge over the river and restoring the weir below the bridge.

In 1859 Charles Dickens published Volume 1 of the first 26 of his " Weekly Journal with which is incorporated Household Words" These journals became world famous as they carried his novels in weekly instalments. Volume 1 contained 'A Tale of Two Cities' as its lead but also contained several other pieces written by Dickens. Of particular interest to the RGT is Issue No. 23 published on Saturday October 1st 1859. Immediately following that issue's part of 'A Tale of Two Cities' there is an article entitled 'A Week with Wodderspoon'. One has to read almost a quarter way through the article to find out exactly what that intriguing title actually means. In 1859 Charles Dickens decided to visit Ipswich and spend a week looking round that fair town. He travelled by boat from London to Harwich and then took a steamer up the Orwell to Ipswich. "Perceiving the streets were very intricate .... I lost no time in inquiring.for an Ipswich Guide" "The outlay of an humble shilling put me in possession of an invaluable work by J. Wodderspoon, which not only told me much that I wanted to learn, but also overwhelmed me with a knowledge of things about which I felt I had no interest whatsoever." "What renders J. Wodderspoon's book a source of peculiar excitement is the circumstance that it was published in 1842, about 17 years ago, and that since that time Vandalic hands have made rather free with the antiquities of Ipswich." The book to which Dickens refers is "A New Guide to Ipswich: Containing Notices of Its Ancient and Modern History" and apparently at the time of its publication was well regarded. The book is available to view on line via Google Books. Dickens makes great play with the facts contained in that book which he found somewhat misleading. He would have been quite right to rubbish one particular 'fact' quoted below - the way Ipswich got its name. It has absolutely nothing to do with the River Gipping because that river was known as the Orwell long after Ipswich grew into a sizeable town. In fact the 'Gyppes' part probably comes from the name of a local Saxon chieftain. Near the end of the piece Dickens decides to try some fishing in the River Gipping with the following results;

In Colin Turners article which starts on page 6 he refers to a mishap with the dumper. Obviously a tough piece of kit.

EDITOR: LES HOWARD 406 Woodbridge Road Ipswich IP4 4EH

01473 712696 les.jan@hotmail.co.uk

The views that are expressed in this newsletter are not necessarily

the views of the River Gipping Trust or its Trustees.