Day 5 at Usk

Three 'Usketeers' sped off down the M50 again today, regaled by Paul in the back with tales of his apprenticeship as a 16 year old carpenter, and an awe - full visit to a Catholic House for Wayward Girls. Boy, were those girls wayward. We were spellbound! Poor old teenager Paul didn't know which way to look, you wouldn't say that about him today.

But back to Usk, which we soon reached. Time flies, when you're being entertained.

Three 'Usketeers' here examine what is left of the building, which is now pretty far down to the ground. Just 2 or 3 courses remained this morning.

There is a vast pile of rubble in the middle. Where to start?

Thanks to our kind neighbour and his long extension lead, Dave was able to bring an SDS drill and have a go at the lower bits, which are held together by much harder mortar. This worked wonders for a while, then slowed down as well.

Hard work, this last bit.

Paul came today, looking cool.

New hard hat, cool shades, clean clothing.

An 'order giving' pose was adopted on top of the rubble. So that's how the clothes stay so clean...

We knocked this quoin off the corner, but it was too heavy for two people, and it was hard for 4 to fit around. Paul made up two loops, with which we managed to transport it to a pallet without having to bend over. Clever, eh?

Thanks to Mike, our local representative and keen GWSR supporter, and a friendly DIY shop in Cwmbran, we were donated a second van load of boxed pallets. We liked these; they are ideal for the inside stones which are only half dressed.
We knew from last week that this is a tipper van, so stood well clear as it tipped. Unfortunately the whole load jammed, so nothing much happened. A prod with a crowbar ensured that it came crashing down as intended.

Dave's SDS drill was brilliant but no sinecure - here it is stuck in a crack and it wouldn't come out. Pull the trigger and it just buries itself deeper. Now what?

Paul M decided that the answer was a hammer and chisel, while cool Paul T carried on supervising and keeping his outfit clean.

You can see the whole weighbridge hut from here....

We had some elevenses, which, surprise, consisted of more doughnuts, but the idea is to share them, not munch through a whole bag by yourself.

We carried on shovelling the mortar rubble out of the remains of the building, in order to expose the flagstone floor.

Jim too had a go and did very well, considering he has only one arm. Ever tried to use a shovel with a single hand?

While we were clearing the inside, we noticed that the doorway had a couple of flagstones outside it. Here is Clive digging off the dirt to reveal them. Remember that this building has had about a foot of spoil built up all round it, so much that at some time or other the doorstep had to be raised by two courses of blues.
Sadly the doorstep flagstones were shattered, so were not worth saving.

Lunch was al fresco again, under a hot sun, which was a surprise. It looked cold and chilly first thing, getting to be autumnal in these last days of August. It wasn't very easy sitting on the boxes filled with stone, so Jim is off the picture on the right. The burger van man did good business with us again, firstly with hamburgers and bacon rolls for lunch, and then Clive bought us all a round of ice creams.

We've taken off most of the dressed stone now, leaving big quantities of rubble and mortar inside. We can't take all that with us.

We reckon the whole building (just 5m x 4m) weighs about 50 tons!

Jim is having another crack at demolition, working Dave's SDS drill 'single handedly'. Another tour de force, how does he do it?

Outside the compound all our cars had their boots open, with plenty of kit to transport.

Ever played a game of 'Hungry hippos' with your children? It was just like that.

Your blogger's car is getting some abuse now, with dirty Usketeers being transported to and fro as well as all their demolition kit, which this morning included a 6ft crowbar. Where to put it? The ski hatch offered the solution.

Clive spent most of the day doggedly shoveling rubble out of the interior. He's doing quite well, don't you think? He has cleared all of this corner and is starting to go along the front wall. Small rubble is being dumped nearby; big stones are being put into the boxes. Today we filled another 6 of them. At say half a ton each, that makes 3 tons of stone shifted between us, and we're no spring chickens.

Slowly we started to tire. Clive is having a good think here. The ice creams raised the spirits for a short while, but three tons can't be denied, the body knows it.

More and more of us started to peel off and sit, panting. Three of us have back issues and we know our limits.

That said, we had sedentary jobs, and there is nothing like good healthy excercise to keep the body happy. We told ourselves....

At the end of the day the dressed stone was pretty much down to ground level, although we think that there are between 2 and 3 courses below that still.
Inside is still a huge pile of small stones and lumps of mortar, but we have made good progress on the right in exposing the flagstones.

As we unwound, Dave put the last of the big stones into the boxes, making an excellent 6 filled for the day.

Here they are, ready for collection.

A quick overview of the site at the end of the day here. Of course the boxes isn't all that we filled today, the quoins and dressed stones were stacked on the pallets to the rear of the picture.

There's also news on transport today.

Yesterday a large flatbed arrived to take away the first load.

We had shrink wrapped 12 pallets of dressed stone for the lorry, as that was the maximum load it could take.

In practice it only took 10 pallets, as two were beyond its reach. Loading was quite slow and laborious, as some pallets were in awkward positions for the lorry (which we had not seen before) and also the forks, suspended from a HIAB, took a lot of manoeuvering.

Here it is almost full. This took a full 2 hours. The loading was moved to the day before at the last minute, and we are very lucky that our local representative Mike was able to jump in and be there at the last minute.

The last pallet goes on. The final two at the rear were out of reach for the HIAB.

After a conflab we decided that the next load, in 14 days time, would be loaded by Telehandler. This machine can sort out the positions of the pallets and pick and chose the ones to load.

Mike sped off for half an hour and came back with an offer of a nearby Telehandler for a minimal sum. Such are Mike's contacts, well done that man.


While the pallets were loaded yesterday, the actual journey to Winchcombe took place today.

Mike accompanied the driver and took him to the yard at Winchcombe, where cheerful Stevie was waiting with the Telehandler to unload.

Unloading was much faster than loading up, so that Mike and the lorry were able to return to Usk by lunch time.

Shuttlings backwards and forwards over the two halves of the yard were interspersed with arrivals of trains with fare paying passengers. They come first, of course.

Here are the first 10 pallets from Usk, stacked at the back of the PWay yard. From here it's just 20 yards to where the building will arise again.

And for those that have forgotten what the weighbridge hut used to look like before we started, here is a picture of it 'as found'.

The vegetation is so abundant, you can't even see which side this is.





More Usketeering next week.

Day 4 at Usk

Nine of us today, quite a regular little gang, and good to meet each other on site after the long drive.

This job has drawn quite some attention, and today a blog reader dropped in with two bags of doughnuts in support. Very kind of John, although munching these might actually have slowed us down at bit. They were certainly appreciated.

Shortly afterwards there was a delivery of wooden stillages. These were spare in a local shop and the owner was kind enough to give them to us, even deliver them. We were just going to help unload them when the Transit turned out to be a tippper and the whole lot came cascading down with a big crash! Well, that's one way of doing it.
But these stillages turned out to be very useful indeed, so we are very grateful.

Mike and Dave set about planting them in a row, so that they could be picked up later by a forklift when full.
It is becoming more and more apparent that the majority of the material with which the weighbridge hut was built was not just the dressed stone, which only forms an outside skin.

About two thirds of the walls is rough Raglan stone rubble, with plenty of lime mortar in between.
As we don't want to rebuild the hut with concrete blocks inside - that wouldn't be very historic - we are taking the stone rubble with us, and this is where the wooden stillages come in so useful. Today we made a start in filling them, taking the rubble out from the inside, where we have been pushing it.

The walls are now down low enough for the window cills to appear. This one was taken off the little window in the western end.

But how to get inside to get the rubble out? The door is blocked up with rubble from the inside.
Answer - remove the door!
The door is in quite good nick, with its frame, except for the bottom few inches, where rainwater must have got in. We believe the entrance was modified at some time, as the door step was raised with two layers of engineering blues. This made the door rather low though. As we mentioned before, the whole of the building is about two courses into the ground, which must have been piled up around it over the years.

While the door was being removed with its frame, we made a start on collecting undressed stone from the interior (you could actually just reach in by now)

The undressed stone was taken to the stillages which were filled slowly during the day. At the end of the day we had ferried in 5 stillages' worth, about 2 1/2 tons we reckon.

Next we took off the big cill for the large window that overlooked the weighing platform. Note how the cast iron Pooley scales are completely buried in rubble. Only the top stuck out.

Next it was lunch. Jim and Clive very kindly sponsored a number of cheeseburgers from Kelvin, our friendly burger van man next door. These were munched with great satisfaction at our refectory table:

As we sat and munched a white van drove into the yard, did a wide turn and stopped by the Heras fencing. Two suspicious looking characters called out 'Do you want them scales?' We said yes, they are going to a museum in Winchcombe. As the van drove off we could hear scrap iron rattle about in the back.

This put the cat among the pigeons. Could they steal the cast iron Pooley scales? We thought not, they were firmly bolted down with rusty nuts on top, and the bottom was buried in a huge pile of rubble anyway. But then it dawned on us that someone intent on scrap iron recovery would quite happily smash the whole thing and pick up the pieces.

We stared at the Pooley scales.... could they be smashed with a big hammer? We thought they probably could, despite the rubble pile around the column.

After a bit of a debate, and given that your blogger had brought a large and a small angle grinder (little Bertha and big Bertha), it was decided that we had better preempt the possible theft and remove the column ourselves.

On closer inspection we found this GWR item number attached to the column.
The plate says:

H. Pooley & Son Ltd, Contractors

GWR 2753.

The column was held down by 4 big bolts with rusted nuts on top.

Time to release big Bertha!

Paul soon had 3 of the 4 nuts off, the fourth was in an awkward corner and that's where little Bertha came in.

All 4 nuts eventually came off, but the column wouldn't budge. Inside there were some levers with hooks and eyes, which we managed to disconnect.

The reluctance to shift was traced to the fact that the building seemed to have been erected after the scales were put in by Pooley's, and part of the front wall weighed upon the feet of the column.

We therefore resorted to pulling down the lower half of the front wall, a bit earlier than we had intended. We didn't want to leave the mechanism behind for thieves, with most of the job already done for them.

One more shove, and the column came free, undamaged too.

Here it is lying on its end. It was rather heavy, so not easily lifted from its place. We scratched our heads about what to do with it. Dave hadn't brought his trailer, so we would have to leave it here.

With 6 men tugging and shoving we got it this far, with the Heras fencing panel behind it opened to get an easier exit.
Our neighbours on the site have been very helpful and friendly. They supplied a long cable extension for big Bertha, and stored our scaffolding and other kit for a month now.
They also offered to look after the Pooley scales until next week, when Dave would bring his trailer.

But how to get it to the secure compound? Again our neighbour came up trumps with this big sack trolley.

Due to the sudden effort on the Pooley scales, demolition of the rest of the building slowed a bit this afternoon.

But you can see here that we have it down to about knee level at this end, with a bit more to go by the door.

The big lump in the corner is what was filled in with rubble under the chimney flue that ran diagonally across it.


With a bit of luck we might get some more of the wooden stillages next week.

Clive doggedly continued with clearing out the usable rubble from the door end. After a lot of scraping and prising out bits of rock he eventually found the flagstone floor of the building. Once he had a flat area he was able to start using the shovel on the limestone mortar that remains if you pick out the bits of rock. This we tipped a few feet away, as we will need it to back fill the hole that will be left when the building is gone.

Here is Clive towards the end of the day, surrounded by a sea of rubble.

This is how far we got at the end of the day - just the bottom of the wall left all round, but with two more courses buried below ground, and then the foundations. Clive was so keen he didn't notice the others wrapping up. There comes a point when we are all tired, catch each other's eye and think - that's it, I can't go any further this time.

When we took away the column, we left behind this hole under it. There is in fact an inspection pit under it, and, we think, a crawling space to somewhere under the weighing table for inspection and maintenance. We'll find out more next time.

Here are also some loose parts we took off - the top of the column, and the balancing arm.
The hook on the end and the weights that go on it are gone though.

As we have already got a weighbridge at Winchcombe, these parts are going to a supporter at Toddington for his museum.

Here's the view at the end of the day. The building has almost vanished (but there is plenty of stone still to remove and store) and we took care to have exactly 12 pallets stacked and shrink wrapped, ready for removal. That's what the lorry can take. Next Wednesday a first transport back to Winchcombe will be arranged.

Quite a neat job, don't you think?

History corner

Our history picture this week is of the Usk station site today:

There isn't a lot to see really. The site has been flattened, and it is now heavily overgrown - just a narrow footpath goes through it, leading up to the tunnel, which is open for inspection.

This picture shows the edge of the former bay siding, now filled in. The cameraman is standing on the main platform, as was.

https://youtu.be/Po88uU54xJA

There's quite a good 'before' and 'after' video on this link. It also shows the goods shed that is still there, and at the end - our weighbridge hut! It is all covered in ivy. True enough, that's how we found it. The brick built goods shed is almost identical to the one at Toddington.

St. Eadburgha, next to big Bertha.

On the way home we drove up to Gorsehill Abbey farm in Broadway, half a mile from our station, and stopped to buy a home made St. Eadburgha cheese. Mrs. Blogger will cope with a lot after a slice of this delicious cheese, even your blogger's horrendously dusty clothing, which got no further than the back kitchen door.
You'll have to imagine the rest of the journey to the bathroom...