Iron railings – Cow Bridge

In the autumn of 2009 Cumbria was hit by devastating floods. Here in Ullswater, river banks were destroyed, fields were flooded and dry stone walls demolished.

At the top of the valley, near Brothers water there was a particularly bad section of wall that had been washed away during these floods.

A temporary fence had been erected, whilst a decision was made on how this section of wall should be repaired.

The fence had become slightly more permanent, but at the beginning of this year it was decided that instead of re building the wall an iron railing fence should be installed instead. This decision was made mainly because of the threat of further flooding. Whilst the iron railings would keep the stock in the field, it would allow any potential flood water to flow through the railings with minimal damage.

The base of the wall was left in place, as there was a considerable difference in height from the field to the road.

The brambles and grass were cut back and holes where dug every 2.5m. These holes were for the uprights

The uprights were then cemented into place, so that there was no fear (should there be another flood) of the fence getting washed away.

Once all the uprights had been cemented into place the fence was starting to take shape.

Before the cement had completely set it was essential that all the uprights were straight and in line with each other

  

Thanks to the time and effort spent in making sure that the uprights were all inline we could start threading the top bar through the holes.

Once all the bars had been threaded through, it was down to our local black smith to weld all the pieces together.

This finished off the fence and helped bring real rigidity to the finished product.

Hopefully we won’t see the likes of the floods we had in 2009, but if we do we know that this section of fence will be ready.