Newtown Canal Field Trip 15th Oct

Heritage Open Day Llanymynech

I held an Open Studio at Llanymynech Heritage Area on 13th September. It was a chance to talk to volunteers and local residents I had met earlier in the year about progress on the residency. I explained how the canal-modelling workshop I held in Spring has developed in to the idea of a Montgomery Canal modelling kit that will be available to loan after the residency. 

It was also a chance to seek people to get involved in a new stage of the project - designing and making a textile artwork for the canal. After conversations with Joan Zorn of the Llanymynech Limeys, it looks like I have struck gold as apparently there are quite a few avid quilters and stitchers in the area....

Open Day, Open Studio

Re-making The Monty

In August I finally made a trip to see the Ellesmere canal yard and have a look in the 'Pattern Shop', a room about which I had heard much and was very curious to explore.

The yard itself is great, with a dry dock and a huge maintenance workshop (see below) of which I am extremely envious. What artist doesn't dream of a studio so well equipped and cavernous? The crane outside is also pretty impressive. 

The yard is an interesting mixture of buildings still in use for their intended purpose, such as the dry dock, where a narrow boat was being repainted, and spaces such as the weighing house that look as they would have done the day people downed tools in the 1930s.

The maintenance workshop / Mega-studio

Next to the maintenance workshop, the original blacksmith's shop is still in action, occupied by blacksmith Rowan Taylor who shares it with a selection of relics and artefacts from canal engineering days. 

One such artefact is this pattern for an iron fire-box. These were used in the little lock-keepers huts to keep warm when there was no adjacent lock cottage. They are temptingly reminiscent of parts from a giant meccano set.

Pattern for an iron fire-box

And now to the Pattern Shop! This was something of a pilgrimage for me. I love mouldmaking and casting and had been told there were many of the original designs or 'patterns' for moulding all sorts of components on the Montgomery Canal. 

This is indeed the case, and what follows are glimpses of a treasure trove of wooden patterns, carved in to all sorts of unlikely shapes that would be more recognisable in metal, but are somehow made strange by their conversion in to this mellow material.

 

Patterns for all sorts of components: handrails to gearing to depth measures...

There was a sense that you could put all these parts together to create a wonderful, completely wooden world.

The wooden treasure trove

Some particularly nice gearing and cogs

Rather than speculating wildly (although that would be fun) I am going to find out more about the patterns and their uses at the Heritage Open day on September the 12th and will post some more images of specific curiosities then.

Until then I will leave you with an image of the wooden pattern for the handrails on the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct. If you've ever walked across this aqueduct you'll agree they are crucial, with a lot riding on their durability. The gaps between the rails are rather wider than I would like, but it adds an extra thrill, and it's good to know they can always make more...

 

 

The Bridge Builders

The headteacher at Abermule Primary School approached me as they had been doing a school-wide project on the canal during their summer term. I agreed it would be good to collaborate with pupils and get them involved in the design of the 'Modelling the Monty' canal-modelling kit.

Pupils from the school spent a few weeks in the run-up to my visit moulding their own plaster bricks using silicone moulds I had made. We decided I would come to the school and we would build a bridge model to test the kit. We also thought it would be a good idea to make a stop-motion animation of the process.

Earlier in the term pupils had been working with their music teacher performing songs celebrating the building of the canals and the glory days of canal transportation, and one of the songs they performed, titled 'Grand Canals', forms the soundtrack to the animation above.

Signs & Sketches

I have been gathering ideas for a textile banner for the Montgomery canal which echoes the one made to celebrate the arrival of the railway in Newtown in the 1800s. 

I've looked at ideas that echo the style and typography of the original banner, which proclaimed 'Success to the Railway', but with imagery that reflects the idea of water power. In the sketch below I've depicted water frothing and pouring through lock gates, with drips of wet paint infecting the text as well.

I like the idea of a banner which mimics one of the officious Shropshire Union Canal 'NOTICE' signs. Here is a sketch of a watery sign, which could carry a message about the process of canal restoration.

I've also been tempted by the idea of a retro-futurist or Steam Punk image that specifically references the Montgomery Canal, so I've been exploring the 'Steampunk User's Manual', below, which covers visual art, literature, design and music.

The emphasis on industry got me thinking about the iconic engineering on the canal. A Monty canal Steampunk image would have to include the paddle gears designed by George Buck, as they are unique to the canal, and they echo the Steampunk obsession with cogs. 

George Buck Paddle Gears

Equally original are the 'fish-bellied' iron bridge decks, cast at Brymbo ironworks in Wrexham. Old photographs of the ironworks, (before it was converted to  a steelworks in 1885) evoke the amazing productive power of the area and how all the materials and components for building the canal and its structures could be obtained in relatively close proximity, within the melting pot of industrial activity that spanned from Ironbridge across to the coal-fields of Wales. The image below is the stuff of which retro-futurist dreams are made!

Brymbo ironworks in the 1860s, copyright Peter Appleton and Wrexham Heritage Service

Iron 'fish-bellied' bridge deck on an unrestored section of the Montgomery Canal near Newtown

Modelling The Monty

At Saturday's Making Waves Festival in Welshpool I set up a little demonstration stand next to the Canal & River Trust. With Dan Austin as my co-engineer, it seemed like a good time to try modelling something specific from the Montgomery Canal. In the end we decided to try modelling one arch of the Vyrnwy Aqueduct.

The Vyrnwy Aqueduct (real not model)

First we made a layout of the butresses...

Then we used a sliced-in-half tin as our 'centring' structure. Not strictly authentic, and a few visitors to the stand joked about whether the canal engineers would have used giant chocolate tins to form their arches.

Plenty of people stopped to comment on the construction process, and there was much speculation on the design and its stability.

Adults were inclined to observe and pontificate, whereas young people were rather more keen to get stuck in and start adding bricks, and once they got started it proved fairly addictive...

It was a much wider arch than had been attempted with the previous models, so we weren't sure if it would hold firm, but with a bit of extra reinforcement above the arch we managed to remove the support in the end. Ta daaa!

The conversations I had with people during the event lead me to believe that it is a very universal human desire (which we don't grow out of) to make models of things that exist or that we would like to exist out of model bricks. Lego, although fun, is not 'real' or messy enough for many miniature engineers.

The idea that the brick moulds, plus pictures and instructions, might be made available as a 'Model the Monty' kit proved very popular. The model itself survived the journey home and will hopefully soon have another arch added before being photographed for the proposed kit.