Restoration - Week 35

Back to Cathkin again this week and worked on the East Terracing once again as well as cleaning more of the terrace stonework we managed to get another 5 foot section of the pitch wall cleared of moss and old paint in preparation for repainting this month.

The Council have cleared the leaves from the North End and the ground does really look much improved in this last 11 months of work. Cleaned another 2 x 1/3 sections of terrace steps and filled with blaes and got some weeding done on this same section.

The running track is again looking rough so decided to crack on with levelling and clearing it as well and recycling the top layer to again rebuild our planned 'Spion Kop' on the old stand-side as this will provide a firmer base on which to refashion a rudimentary Victorian terrace in the years to come.

But as you can see it's slow work but does massively improve the track surface and we aim to get most of the 400 yard track levelled and cleared by the end of this year which will make it far safer to run on once again. This is a track that the likes of Willie Maley and Harry McNeill raced on late in the 19th Century and deserves to be restored to a functioning surface again.

Delighted with how the old pitch wall has turned out following a three days of intensive scrubbing! And depending on the weather we will start repainting it in sections as we restore each small part of this East Terrace. We also began to replace the top surface of grass at this end of the ground which

was damaged previously but replaced with stone chip which has prevented the grass from regrowing. There is a broken drain underneath which has allowed the ground to flood at this East corner but the grass should now recover with our mix of turf over the top in all the 'bald' areas. So, almost a year into the restoration we are on track to make further repairs and improvements to the ground in 2019.