Day 2 at Usk

Back down the M50 to Usk, with mounting enthusiasm in the car. Last week the roof, today the walls! Well, it didn't go quite that quickly, but we did well.

On arrival, and after doughnuts, we spent quite a lot of effort on marking up the blocks with wax crayon so that, in principle, the walls can be rebuilt with the same blocks in the same places.

Doug did the southern side, here next to the failed lintel over the little window by the fire.

The wax crayons were a good idea in principle, but in practice it is proving hard to write legible numbers as the surface of the stone is so rough.

This is the W gable end as left last week, with ivy growing out of the lower half of the chimney stack. This is a record shot to show where the numbered blocks are located, just in case.

While Jim is numbering more blocks on the left, Doug is giving Paul a detailed account of his recent fishing trip.

Numbering the blocks was slow and hard work, and Jim here has taken over from Doug on the S facade.






The forecast was for milder weather but to start with we had hot sun again, and we put on our sun protection cream.

It then started to rain! Wales, eh? We wondered how the fields on this side of the border could be so much greener than in Gloucestershire.

At least the rain could dampen down the dust, which rose out of the interior of the hut as we pushed the small stones and mortar into it from above.

Dave, Peter and Paul took down the western gable end a little further, with the rubble infill dropped in the foreground. We'll pick out the best bits from that and take them home in dumpy bags later.






Soon it was lunch time. Last week most of us brought sandwiches, but the delicious smells of the burger van across the road were too strong to resist.

Which way to the burger van?

A mission headed out to the burger van to see if they did chips. They did. And a rather good bacon roll, with a special hot Korean BBQ sauce. Worth the trip to Usk alone, we reckon.

Reeling in that Perch was a bit of a struggle, it was this big... oh, and some cheesy chips please.

Paul brings home the prize, a big box of chips.

You have to keep the workers well fed, we worked hard today.

A selection of pallets and scaffolding planks made us a cosy dining area, surrounded by blocks of Raglan stone. We all concurred that it was not only the heritage recovery that we enjoyed, but also the cameraderie.

After lunch and with the workers well fed, there was a certain reluctance to return to work, although advice was freely given.

We were quite content to let project leader Dave do the running.

What?

Doug was at the eastern end, adding numbers to the blocks at the upper end of the gable. These were about to be taken down, so we needed them to have numbers. Have you finished yet Doug? We are raring to go.

There followed an inspection of progress from above. Which wall to do next? We decided to leave the Southern wall for a bit and concentrate on the Eastern one, the one by the door on the right.

Here is the Eastern gable end in the process of being taken down, photographed from the Western end, where the inner wall was being taken down.

This is a bit of a posed photograph, we weren't really starting on this facade.

Just to give you a bit of an idea of how it went. In fact most of the blocks were taken down by hand, the chisel was used only rarely.

After taking down the gables, we realised that you can't take down one wall at a time, as the quoins link it to the next. We'll need to think about this next time.

As usual, there was plenty of 'advice' from below. Odd that, it feels more like joshing....

Here is the chimney flue seen from above during demolition of the western gable end.

Interesting how it curves round. We thought initially that there must have been a chimney directly above the fireplace in the corner, but the corner was completely original, a triangle filled with mortar and little bits of stone through and through.

That still leaves the puzzle of why a chimney stack in blues. Maybe the original fell down at some point?

As we got on to the wall proper on the western end, we started prising out the first of the big quoins. Definitely a two man job, these. We decided to stack all the quoins on separate pallets.

Opposite, on the eastern gable, progress was good and some wood strengtheners were reached. They were also life expired. The door looks good though, perhaps we can re-use it?

In our regular weekly reports on Usk we'll show you bits of how the station used to look.

Here is the first item. The hole in the trees marks the spot where there used to be a rail over road bridge. The railway embankment then runs away to the left, with a track dropping down to ground level to service the goods yard, the entrance of which was by the weighbridge here. To the right the embankment carried on to a large double track bridge over the river Usk, and then into the station itself, which was by a tunnel under Usk castle.

Come the end of the afternoon, and fatigue began to set in. At least the stack of quoins and blue bricks make increasingly attractive benches to sit on.

Here is the closing shot of the day. Both gable ends are down, and a couple of courses have been taken down all round as well. We won't need the scaffolding much longer now.

The pallets will be transported on a flatbed, but can't be stacked.

We will wrap them in cling film to stop the stones moving, and had a little test wrap today. Dave is doing 'the rounds'.

Clingfilm wrapped round, a committee of judges formed to debate its success.

Marks out of 10 ? We'll give him 5... we would have done it differently, of course.

Another end of the day shot, this time from the corner by the former weighing table (now scrapped) which used to lie in front of the bigger window on the left.

From this angle you can see that we have indeed taken down quite a bit today, after our mammoth numbering session to start with.

More next week.

BTW, did you know you can get an email advising you when a new blog entry has been made, by adding your email address into the box at the top right hand of the blog page. Works a treat.