Weekend dig report Geldeston finale

Dig report Waveney finale

As mentioned on the previous pages, this year’s camps got Geldeston’s first lock wall to the point where “a long weekend would probably do it...”

River Waveney extra weekend The last few bricks at Geldeston

As Ian reported in his camp report on the previous pages, this summer’s two weeks made some excellent progress with taking down and rebuilding the badley decayed south side lock chamber wall at Geldeston Lock (limit of navigation on Broadland’s River Waveney) following on from the success of the camps in 2017-19. But given the amount of brick-cutting needed (not to mention the odd misbehaving mixer) there just wasn’t quite enough time to complete the last section of the wall - although it was close enough that a long weekend would “probably do the job”.

And so it was that I got the call from Dave ‘Evvo’ Evans to be a member of a small team (there wasn’t room for more than a handful of people to work on it at once) to complete the job over a Friday to Sunday working party in late September. Unfortunately the day job meant that I couldn’t join them until Friday evening, and by the time I met Evvo, John, Pete, ’Arry and Andy at the well-appointed Beccles Sea Cadet’s HQ (sorry TS I think!), they’d got on so well on the Friday that it looked like we might finish with a day to spare.

An early start to avoid the Sea Cadets’ fundraising event, then drive through the Suffolk and Norfolk lanes, spotting a crinkle-crankle wall and the elusive remains of the former Waveney Valley Railway, saw us on site by 8.30am and laying bricks as the tide rose...

Ah yes, the tide. As I mentioned, this is the limit of navigation on the Waveney, and that’s because that’s about as far as the tides flow, and the reason for building the lock (and two others further upstream) was to enable boats to get beyond there to Bungay. There’s no actual plan to restore this length to navigation (the other locks have Martin Ludgate

Nearing completion: the bricks on edge are added to form a coping page 17

been replaced by flood control sluices which would make it tricky) so the aim is to restore the lock as a historic feature, and hopefully a place for the unique surviving trading wherry (Broads sailing barge) Albion to be displayed at times. But the tide still makes itself felt at the lock, with its twice-daily rise and fall of a couple of feet or more, depending on how close to the fortnightly spring tides it is.

At the previous camps, the bricklaying began at a height where it was very much influenced by the tides. I visited briefly in 2017 and managed to lay three bricks as the tide threatened to rise high enough to wash them away again from below - before the heavens open and the rain did its best to do the same from above...

But for this final weekend the last incomplete section of wall at the tail end of the lock had already been built up to above high spring tide level, so at least that wasn’t a worry. On the other hand, we were working from a floating pontoon which rose as the tide did. I can see that a larger group would be able to take advantage of this (“Can we have all the tall brickies working this morning, then we’ll swap and the short brickies can take over this afternoon”), but for us it was a case of stretching or stooping accordingly. Oh, and the ‘equal and opposite reaction’ thing that you may remember from school physics means that when you tap a brick to the left, the pontoon you’re standing on moves to the right, and vice versa...

But despite this interesting new slant on providing the brickies with something to moan about, we cracked on with it. adding the final courses, the line of bricks-on-edge to top it off, the sloping section where the lock tail wall drops down to the level of the downstream landing stage, and a few ‘interesting’ corners for gate recesses and the like.

And yes, we did finish it on the Saturday. We backfilled the wall with all the leftover rubble from the demolition stage, leaving the River Waveney Trust with just some landscaping to do to to tidy it up. The Trust’s Bernard was very pleased with it, and our leader Evvo bought us a drink to savour in the beer garden of the adjacent Locks Inn to celebrate, before we retired to the Sea Cadets’ base to sample John’s cooking.

Oh, and to make it even more like a ‘real’ dig, once we’d sorted out the tools and kit and packed up on the Sunday morning, John and I then spent the rest of the day driving half way across the country, unloading a load of stuff, pushing trailers around, picking up John’s car, and then driving back to London. I almost felt nostalgic for the old days...

Job done! Thanks to Evvo for leading this year’s efforts, and well done to everyone who’s been involved over the length of the Geldeston project. And don’t forget - there’s the other lock wall to rebuild sometime. Watch this space...

Martin Ludgate

Martin Ludgate