A clear view across the Forge Bank site

Our site has been transformed over the last week as demolition contractors Pyes brought the walls of the redundant buildings down to ground level.  

The picture shows a new view of the site of Terrace A taken from the pedestrian street with the Mill (with it's new roof) in the background.


The contractors were able to remove the main timbers from the building and put them aside for recycling into wood chip before taking the walls down.  The site was buzzing with activity on Friday and Saturday with men picking through the rubble to remove more of the timber and steel for recycling.

Crushing is due to start on Monday to produce aggregate suitable for using in the foundations of our new homes.  We are hoping the wet weather continues as it will make it easier to control the dust.

Parts of the of the building that was Halton Mill garage were made of stone and this is being kept aside for filling gabion baskets for the retaining walls we will need on site.  

We'll be using some of the brick for gabions too and are busy trying to judge the right 

amount not to crush.    

The next job will be to remove the foundations of the old buildings, which will be less dramatic, but just as important, as we need to ensure that we have uniform ground conditions to build the new foundations and retaining walls on.  It's a shame we couldn't reuse some of these structures, but we have no way of assessing how strong they are so can't take that risk.

The floor level of Terrace A will be at about the same level of the floor slab of the old factory building and this photo, taken from ground level, shows how much higher than the boathouse this is.  The boathouse walls are due to be sandblasted and the roof replaced using reclaimed slate, but not until after we have moved in.

The demolition has opened up a view of the long thin building, imaginatively known as "building 2", which will be on the north side of the pedestrian street.  The section in the lefthand half of the picture will be refurbished to provide bicycle storage and a bicycle repair workshop whilst the more distant half will be transformed in to the play room, laundry and toilets of the Common House together with some guest rooms.

The final photograph shows the base of the old boiler house chimney, which is being removed to accommodate the lower ground floor of Terrace F, which will be built into the hillside.  The bricks from the chimney are the most suitable for re-use because of the effect the heat from the chimney has had on the mortar.  Some of the chimney will be kept in place for now as it is holding up the slope!   

We expect the demolition contractors to be on site for another couple of weeks.

Jon