The Oriel Number Eleven

Welcome, and apologies it’s been so long. We did plan to have the annual report ready to send in the early summer, and to do an issue of The Oriel back then. The relevant trustees whose contributions were needed were not both available at the relevant time to support that, and we ended-up doing, like last year, a bit of a scramble to get the report together and submitted in time for the deadline at the end of January. We don’t want our charity’s name coming up on the Charity Commission website with a very obvious black mark against it for being late making our submission. We had several years of being late in the early years, but Wessex Waterways is now approaching its eighth birthday and we’re keeping on top of our regular work on the ground. We’re moving closer to making a real constructive start on a structure that we’ve not worked on before (though I admit the first step in that is some dismantling of the present structure. Being late submitting our annual report is something we want to leave in the past, and both relevant trustees will be trying harder to be more prompt with the report of our activities in the period ending 31 March 2025.

One lesson to draw from the long period of time between issues of The Oriel is that having more people with relevant skills and with willingness to help would mean that the available time of our existing team members would not be spread so thinly. One bit of good news in this direction was an approach from someone living in Chippenham who worked at Foxham and at Dauntsey with WBCT (including under its previous name, W&BCAG) in the past. We now have another volunteer joining us for Saturdays when they are available, and we have also gained a Facebook presence.

WWRT are excited to announce that our new Facebook page is up and running. Please ‘Like’, ‘Share’ or ‘Follow’ and keep up to date with the latest progress at Foxham, Dauntsey, and the area where we work within Seven Locks. The page already includes pictures of the work carried out in the past few months, and also historical pictures of the canal over the past thirty years, and even newspaper articles from the 1800’s. There’s even a link to the WWRT Donate page where donations towards the repair of Oriel Bridge would be very much appreciated.

Equally, if anyone has any pictures, or information to add to the page, then just message us through Facebook, as we’d love to add your favourite photos and information too. You can find us on https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61569543905848

Much of our work party time continues to be maintaining the towpath and the canal channel. During the summer months volunteers are often to be seen walking behind mowers. In the autumn and winter, we’ve trimmed back the towpath hedge, and, with some help from a visiting team from WRG BITM, the canal bank and the area around Hignetts Hole (a spillway) received attention. One Saturday morning, at Elm Farm Foxham, we found two fallen trees across the towpath, so the first task of the day was to cut these into appropriately sized pieces and clear the access along for the people of Foxham and Christian Malford to enjoy a walk in the countryside.

Towpath, canal bank and hedgerow west of Dauntsey Lock awaiting a bonfire for that pile of brash

Larry was aware that, following the stump pulling programme some years ago led by Gordon Williams, there had been some willow saplings coming up, particularly on the offside bank.  These needed extracting before they became more established and so we spent several Saturdays on that task.  With the help of one of his brothers in law, Luke was able to buy a small tirfor winch some years ago.  It goes away each year with the WRG BITM tirfors which are kept in their van which is stored near Rachael’s home.  The pulling cable had suffered from not very careful rolling onto the storage cage in the past and a decision was taken to buy a new cable, which is a specially assembled item, with a hook fitted at one end and the cable tapered at the other end so it can be fed into the machine.  ‘Machine’ perhaps implies it’s powered – it is, but the source of that is human effort.

In the last few weeks before the bird nesting season starts – we are advised that is at the start of March – we made a particular effort to complete any noisy work.  This meant some long days with the backpack brushcutter and the polesaw/hedgetrimmer cutting material and leaving it ready for raking up and disposal during March.  We’ve had two Saturdays in March with dry and not windy weather so, with the benefit of Larry’s skills with bonfires, all the cut material east of the road has now gone up in smoke.  There is still some raking and burning to do west of the road, but that’s a much smaller proportion of the task.  At Foxham, where the towpath is regularly enjoyed by locals as a place to walk, with or without their dog(s), we make sure that cut material is at least raked clear before the end of our work party.  We completed the burning of brash, including a massive stack of willow saplings (sufficiently big to conceal a car) before we started the sections of the canal working westwards from Bowds Lane.

During the autumn of last year, we were able to give some attention to preparations for the repairs to  Oriel Bridge.  We learned from Michael, the farmer, that he has two herds of cows which need to be kept separate.  That includes needing two access routes over the canal – the existing vehicular bridge provides one route for one herd, but Michael’s other cows won’t be able to get to the milking parlour if we remove their access over Oriel Bridge.  We did approach the MOD at Lyneham to ask if they wanted to practice deploying a temporary bridge at a location very local to them and to help a small charity with our first structure repair project.  Unfortunately, they weren’t able to help us, but we do have a pair of scaffolding ladder beams which Rachael has loaned to us, plus some scaffold tube and fittings.  

Farmer Michael helped us by taking his tractor and trailer to Rachael’s patch at Dauntsey to collect the two ladder beams (they are much too heavy to transport using a pair of luggage bars on a Vauxhall Corsa) and the bridge for the cows is now in position.  The cows will remain in their barn through March, but when they are allowed out onto the fields in April, the bridge we’ve put together will be ready for them.  There is a plan to use two of the steel plates that currently form the deck of the bridge as a re-enforcement on top of the planks when we start dismantling the bridge.

Farmer Michael has agreed to allow us the use of a large triangular area of the field adjacent to Oriel Bridge, so we’ve now fenced off this area.  We emptied the Elephant (a shed that was once at Seven Locks) and moved it to where Michael could pick it up over the hedge using his telehandler, and it is now in our compound next to the bridge.

 In previous issues of The Oriel, we reported the steps to bring Rachael’s JCB 812 Powerslide excavator back into action. Additional tasks for this were replacing the windscreen and two cab windows – damage caused by vandals, presumably at the same time as the damage to the deck of Elephant Bridge.  This was reported in The Oriel number nine.  With help from a battery booster, the engine of the JCB was started.  With help from a friend in Calne who has a metalwork lathe, a new shaft was fitted to re-connect a foot pedal in the cab with the hydraulic valve that controls one of the tracks, and one Saturday morning, Larry drove the excavator along the towpath, over a bund, across three fields and into our compound at Oriel Bridge.

 As mentioned in The Oriel number Eight, we have some kit bought with funds from the Bradenstoke Solar Park Community Benefit Fund which we’ll be bringing in to use at Oriel Bridge.  This fund is the mechanism where some of the income to the solar energy farm on a part of what was RAF Lyneham is distributed to local good causes.  There are some constraints on what they can fund, but machinery to enable us to do our work can be funded.  The Oriel number ten included a photo of Luggit, which is a motorised wheelbarrow.  Here is a better photo of Luggit, and a photo of our diesel-powered vibrating poker which we’ll use to compact the concrete to repair the abutments of Oriel Bridge.

The vibrating poker

A recent purchase we’ve made, which we’ll be using at the early stages to dismantle the parapets and deck of Oriel Bridge is a disc cutter. A more recent gift to us from a friend in Calne, to help us sharpen the blades for our brush cutters and other tools, is a bench grinder.

The bench grinder, a gift from Stan Woods

One other friend, who lives in Calne and who we must credit, is David Witchell. He’s a former bricklayer and, took the time one Saturday morning to come out and take a look while Luke was on the plot to show him around. When Luke explained the difficulties we were having with a supplier of paint located in China he drew on his knowledge and suggested Akzo Nobel as an organisation to approach. Luke knew of them as the company that owns the Dulux brand which was previously used by ICI.

With David’s encouragement Luke reached out to Akzo Nobel. They found a specialist supplier with a local representative living in Stratford on Avon. One recent Wednesday Dan Lamb of Tor Coatings accompanied Luke for a walk along the towpath to Oriel Bridge. When they met, Luke learned that his father was a colleague of one of his school friends from Ampthill in Bedfordshire. We now have estimates for the quantities of the materials we’ll need – and a quotation will follow shortly. One of us will have to travel to Swindon to collect the materials, but that’s a whole lot easier than trying to buy paint and get it shipped from China.

Here are a few more photos to illustrate our areas of activity:

Rachael’s JCB 812 Powerslide, after the broken windscreen had been replaced but before we moved it to the compound near Oriel Bridge

Oriel Bridge with the temporary bridge in position for the cows to use

Photo taken from under Oriel Bridge with the excavator parked behind the hedge on the offside

Costa Coffee, Phelps Parade, Calne, which serves as a venue for conversations including with Luke’s Wiltshire Council Ward Councillor.

Photos from the Thames Bridges Trek in September 2024 – Luke at the northern end of Southwark Bridge, and (right) on Tower Bridge

Comments from the Chair

 I opened this issue of The Oriel with the news that we’d submitted our Annual Report to the Charity Commission by the due date.  We’re distributing the Report to our members with this issue of The Oriel, and I am getting things organised for our AGM.  I’m therefore confident that our next email shot will come much earlier than this one did following publication of The Oriel Number Ten.

 My thanks to all of you for your continuing interest and support.