Restoration - Week 14

Another good week's work in decent weather allowed us to completely clear the East End terracing of all trees and rubbish built up over the years. Started to cut away the weeds to expose what remains of the steps, which as you can see below is not very much! Most of the concrete has gone now and we are down to ash and WW2 rubble below, first filled in 1947. Dusty and dirty work but necessary

and grafted for another 10 hours to try and bring this area of the ground back into some semblence of a stadium. Cleared the first three terraces of moss and leaves and began the laborious process of polishing the stonework underneath and began refilling the missing concrete with red blaes from the

running track and giving a decent surface to walk upon in the meantime. The plan is to cover all of the missing areas with small stones and red ash until we have raised enough funds to begin filling these back in with concrete, however the terracing will need to be re-aligned as vandalism and nature have wrecked much of the stepping, which will need replaced with brick in the short time.

As the photo above demonstrates though, this does look much better and a safer covering surface for park users as we are removing each large tree root on each terrace. This has slowed down much of the restoration work on other sections of the ground but I feel this area needs the most attention and is in

real danger of being lost forever. However enough remains for us to bring it back to life and there are still 42 of the 54 terrracing steps still in good enough condition to be simply refilled and repaired in the next 12 months. We are working on several fund-raising projects for 2019 which should raise enough money for us to repair this 4th section of the ground we have worked on thus far.

We have also now cleared more of the pitch wall this week and cleared the path in front of the terracing and removed all the growth, trees and weeds from this formerly 'green carpeted' nature reserve! The woodpile however is now over 4 feet in height and we are looking for a way to utilise most of this in future, but for now we will continue basic coppicing and storing the wood.

The Community Service lads have continued working on clearing the former South Enclosure and made more progress this week and half of the old stadium is now looking 100% better than it did when we began restoration in January 2018. They are aiming to get this section cleared next week

before moving on to the uneven and overgrown running track around the pitch which is currently unusable and this will make a huge difference to the ground for park users and the football teams who play here. These photos are of the South Enclosure which I will begin the stone work on next month.

More evidence of anti-social behaviour and drug use this week however as I cleared this section and this is another reason why we will be petitioning the council to remove, or let us remove the trees in the former terracing blocks as they encourage this behaviour and provide a cover from the public for

drug users. In the meantime we will crack on with this section, restore & fill out the terracing and cut a direct patch all around the ground over the next few weeks. A very good week's work.....!