Editor:
This reminded me that a report of the earlier work
appeared in the Winter 2004 newsletter. Angela
Smith has kindly dug out these original colour
pictures for me.
HMG Working Party on 14 November 2004 by Nigel Smith
After an excellent lunch courtesy of the Yowards at
Slipper Mill, we constructed temporary scaffolding
next to the sluice at the Slipper Millpond whilst
the tide dropped. The objective was to complete
earlier repairs to the sluice gates done over a year
ago and specifically to fix a thick rubber strip
onto the bottom of the gate and add some plastic
strips to the side bearers to reduce leakage. The
gate was raised to its full by a pulley block and
cleaned of marine life before the rubber strip was
fixed in place – this required the gate mechanism to
be dismantled which was a time consuming job. All
the while, walkers on the public footpath were
asking us what we were doing. Due to the short
daylight, the job had to be completed under
floodlights and torches, but it was all finished by
6:30pm. Hopefully, a job well done and good for at
least 20 years or so.
