Mountfield

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SW CONSTRUCTION: Southern Water's contactors, MGJV, have been delayed with the work on Church Road as, on excavating the trench, they discovered the exact location of an old, beautifully built, brick culvert mentioned by one of the local residents who shall remain nameless. (Blame Pete Edwards.). They immediately contacted East Sussex County Council to try to ascertain the owner of the culvert and to confirm if the culvert was still connected at some point. Legally, they cannot demolish the culvert without these confirmations. ESCC were slow to respond despite repeated chasing by our site team however contact has now been made. Southern Water are aware of the issue and their designers, Atkins, have been instructed to come up with two solutions, one for an active culvert and one for a redundant channel. Unfortunately, this does mean that they have lost time on the original programme and it is likely that this piece of work will take an extra week to complete. This will mean that they will not be able to open the road a few days earlier than scheduled to accommodate the by-election and the bonfire party.

As we mentioned last week, special arrangements are in hand for the by-election (Thursday October 27th). We should also remind people that, for the duration of the closure to Church Road, there will be no scheduled postal collections from the post boxes at Church House/Pond or Banks cottages but Dave the Post will be collecting from them in the course of his daily deliveries.

IF YOU GO DOWN TO THE WOODS: Peter writes: BG was closed for production for most of the last week for maintenance and worse. Once again, they took advantage of the situation to lay on an EHS day — that is, Environment, Health and Safety. I was very pleased to be asked to lead five one-hour walks in their part of Castle Wood, which I did wearing my DACS (Darwell Area Conservation Soc.) hat. Small groups were ferried up to lower Laggan Ashes — where the Gyproc Club shoot. From there I led and showed them some small ditches, a dried up muddy track, some bigger ditches, and some dried up puddles before ending up on the same original dried up muddy track. That may not sound like fun but those thrills embraced the the iron age, the 12th and 13th centuries, the Tudors, Captain Cook (who invented Australia) and a road that dates back, ooh, over 5000 years ago. Some of the punters were really rough but not all of them were managers and so, overall, they were a hugely rewarding bunch. As ever, there were lots of jokes and lots of fun but the final irony is that, half way through one of the walks, the fire alarm went off at the board plant. We were ordered to stay where we were until, just as we were about to draw lots for who should become tea, the all clear was sounded.

LISTED STATUS: Following on from the last item, if you are interested in walks — long or short — through our local history, or talks or new publications, do please contact me by phone or email and I can put your name on the database. I am currently planning various adventures next year starting with a talk early in the new year on Mountfield’s Tudor iron furnace and forge.