Jump to content

Waterways charity delivers £288K vital repairs to Liverpool's historic Albert Dock sea wall


Ray T

Featured Posts

CRT Press Release

 

17th October 2022

 

Liverpool’s historic Albert Dock sea wall will be more resilient to winter storms and River Mersey tidal surges in future, thanks to a £288,000 repair project delivered by the Canal & River Trust.

 

The waterways and wellbeing charity, which cares for the city’s South Docks’ water space and dock structures, is currently working on a complex eight week maintenance programme along 350 metres of the dock wall, on the river side of the Tate Modern art gallery.

 

Supported by players of People’s Postcode Lottery, the project involves fitting new matching granite blocks into 18 holes in the 180-year-old wall, as well as clearing off debris, old grouting, and replacing it with new weather-resistant mortar. A drone survey has also identified 14 metres of significant cracks and these will be repointed, part of the pedestrian walkway will be re-surfaced, coping stones re-aligned and new protective fenders attached to the Canning Half Tide Dock entrance.

 

Twice daily tides and exposed weather conditions make working conditions very challenging for the Kier contractors on the job. With only a four hour working window between low tide and high tide, workers have to abseil over the dock wall, with new materials lowered down to them by a temporary winch and basket. A special form of quick-drying lime mortar, approved by heritage specialists, is being used to prevent it being washed away when the tide comes back in.

 

Canal & River Trust project manager Curtis Udogu said: “This is one of the most difficult engineering maintenance jobs I have ever worked on. Six metre high tides mean that twice a day the swirling waves of the river rise up to within a metre of the pedestrian footpath, before dropping dramatically away and exposing the mud flats. It is an incredibly exposed site and sometimes gale force winds make it too dangerous to work. Access has also been a challenge. This part of the docks is a popular pedestrian walkway, so that meant we couldn’t close off the site, erect scaffolding or install large cranes. We have managed to think of a smart way around the constraints and be more flexible about how we deliver the project, so people can still go about their daily business.”

 

Albert Dock, opened by Prince Albert in 1846, is one of the iconic sights of Liverpool’s famous waterfront. Its pioneering bonded warehouses were the brain child of radical Liverpool dock engineer Jesse Hartley, who in the early1880s created a new dock basin for foreign sailing ships to enable the rapid off-loading of valuable cargoes like brandy, tea, cotton, silk, tobacco, sugar and jute.

 

Bill Froggatt, a heritage adviser with the Canal & River Trust, explained: “Jesse Hartley was at the global cutting edge of world trade in Liverpool. He built or re-built 26 docks and the city’s dock estate grew fourfold from just 18 hectares at the start of his tenure in 1824 to 86 hectares by the time he retired.

 

“Mindful of the ferocious Atlantic weather, Hartley built his walls to last. In fact they were so well constructed that when Albert Dock was bombed during World War Two, the city fathers decided it would be too expensive to dismantle them and thankfully just abandoned them. Eventually Albert Dock was beautifully restored as part of the wider 1980s regeneration project and now, together with 2,000 miles of waterways,  the Trust has the privilege of being their long-term custodian, promoting health and wellbeing and animating the water space with boating, canoeing, paddle boarding, concerts and festivals.”

 

Last year Albert Dock and Salthouse Dock became the first inland marinas in England to be awarded the international Blue Flag quality mark status – a recognition of clean, safe water, offering the highest environmental standards for visitors.

 

For more information about volunteering or donating to the Canal & River Trust, or visiting Albert Dock, please go to the Trust’s website: www.canalrivertrust.org.uk

 

ENDS

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

CRT do appear to have got a very bad deal in Liverpool, I wonder if they were stitched up by Peel Holdings?  The look to own the sea wall and fencing that will need a lot of maintanance, but none of the associated land or buildings that they might be able to get an income from.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, dmr said:

CRT do appear to have got a very bad deal in Liverpool, I wonder if they were stitched up by Peel Holdings?  The look to own the sea wall and fencing that will need a lot of maintanance, but none of the associated land or buildings that they might be able to get an income from.

Yes. Always seemed odd that the railings had signs saying owned by CRT.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, pearley said:

Yes. Always seemed odd that the railings had signs saying owned by CRT.

 

Exactly, I think they own the wall and Railings and not much else, though maybe they do own the locks, another makor liability.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 minutes ago, dmr said:

 

Exactly, I think they own the wall and Railings and not much else, though maybe they do own the locks, another makor liability.

 

I sometimes wonder about what "own" means in this sort of context. Does "owning" the railings means they own perhaps £10k in scrap iron? Or do they also own some land a few centimetres wide by "x" metres long? I wonder if the parcel of land a few cm wide by "x" metres long is registered at the LR. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

I sometimes wonder about what "own" means in this sort of context. Does "owning" the railings means they own perhaps £10k in scrap iron? Or do they also own some land a few centimetres wide by "x" metres long? I wonder if the parcel of land a few cm wide by "x" metres long is registered at the LR. 

 

More importantly its not the railings of an inland waterway, its the Mersey, and its so wide its not really a river, more an estuary, or even the sea. Likewise the locks bring sea-going boats from the Mersey into docks that don't have much to do with Inland Waterways. CRT use and possibly own Canning dock, but visiting narrow boats have to travel through Albert dock and other areas of water that appear to be under the control of other autorities. It appears to me that CRT have got lumberred with maintaining other authorities infrstructure.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

32 minutes ago, Ronaldo47 said:

Interesting that they refer to themselves as a "waterways and wellbeing charity". With their current emphasis on wellbeing, perhaps "wellbeing and waterways" might better reflect their present priorities 

 

Well their history suggest that they certainly DON'T mean the 'wellbeing of the waterways'.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
On 18/10/2022 at 11:45, Ronaldo47 said:

Interesting that they refer to themselves as a "waterways and wellbeing charity". With their current emphasis on wellbeing, perhaps "wellbeing and waterways" might better reflect their present priorities 

 

How about "Cycling and Running Trust, the Wellbeing Charity"...?

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Mersey Docks and Harbour Board handed over the redundant South Docks to the Merseyside Development Corporation back in the 80s. MDC was eventually abolished and its assets transferred to English Partnerships, who IIRC became part of the Commission for the New Towns and then the Homes and Communities Agency. The docks were transferred to BW at the time they were building the Liverpool Link. Hence CRT has inherited the original dock company liability for the river walls.

  • Greenie 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 17/10/2022 at 18:51, dmr said:

CRT do appear to have got a very bad deal in Liverpool, I wonder if they were stitched up by Peel Holdings?  The look to own the sea wall and fencing that will need a lot of maintanance, but none of the associated land or buildings that they might be able to get an income from.

Nowt to do with Peel, who now own the privatised Mersey Docks and Harbour Company (and the North Docks) and have not to my knowledge been involved at all with the South Docks.

MDC was set up to redevelop areas of Liverpool, including the South Docks. They funded and managed the provision of roads, utility services and landscaping to the dock estate, restoration of historic infrastructure, repairs to the Abert Dock buildings and finding new uses for them, and facilitating redevelopment of vacant areas. The aim was that these buildings would be sold on to recoup some of the public investment and that the private owners would be incentivised to manage the commercial assets, while providing public space. On the whole this has been pretty successful. The water spaces don't provide commercial benefits and hence remained with MDC. With the redevelopment largely completed I suspect there was government pressure to transfer the water space from a development agency to a more appropriate body to manage water space, and BWB was an obvious choice, particularly as it linked with (or maybe led directly to) BW's aspirations to build the Liverpool Link to connect the south docks to the national waterways network. I don't know what sort of dowry may have come with the South Docks to cover future liabilities.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.