The Farnborough Park Project


March/April 2012

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Having finished work on the Dairy and gotten the writing up out of the way it was time to take a look at the remains of the series of sluice gates  which maintained the chain of long thin ponds to the west of the Rookery. On the 1772 estate map these are known as the Serpentine River.There were two issues here which made it all feel like a race against time. In the first place the nettles and other surrounding vegetation is shooting up, you can almost see the stuff growing plus the fabric of the monuments is in astonishingly poor condition, again one feels in danger of seeing it all collapse pretty imminently. Any way having done a certain amount of clearing  survey work on sluices 2 and 3 is complete with the lower sluice, number 4 underway.

map



Sluice 2 has a number of interesting features: the south pier is reasonably well preserved while the north pier is very ruinous, bits and pieces ate scattered around amongst the rubble such as an iron grid and because of the flow of the water it was possible to clear some of the bottom to reveal details of timber boarding. Like all the sluices the angled rebates survive which enabled the sluice gates to close against each other whilst presenting a shallow 'prow' pointing up stream.

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Sluice 2, general view from west                                                          Sluice 2, north pier from east


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Sluice 2, angles rebate for gate                                                                                               Sluice 2, iron grid



Sluice



Sluice



Sluice three is in some ways the best preserved with some very nice stonework showing on the down stream face, presumably because up stream the fabric would be mostly underwater. Like all the sluices it is built from a mixture of brick and dressed stone and shows evidence of at least two phases of building.


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Sluice 3, north pier from the west (down stream)                                                               Sluice 3, general view from the north east (up stream)



Sluice


Sluice


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The bridge a few metres down stream from sluice 3



I only came across sluice four rather late in the day and a real nightmare it is proving to be. I had to clear a lot of undergrowth, including some particularly nasty briars and the whole thing,as well as being the largest construction is also in an especially parlous state. The planning process is proceeding quite slowly and cautiously. However this sluice shows the best evidence for a least three periods of rebuilding, the latter most seeing the original timber gates replaced with a solid concrete block, now partially broken through, which echoed the original configuration. The outer face of the north pier has a particularly alarming lean to it.


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Sluice 4, view from south -west                                                                                                   Sluice 4, north pier, south-west face


plan
Sluice 4 Plan


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Sluice 4 elevation


And then of course exploring further downstream there are a series of works known locally as the old sheep wash which seem to be about managing the confluence of two streams and creating a triangular pool at the very end of the Serpentine River. This will be even trickier to draw!



Apart from the work outlined above I've also started traipsing round the country to examine  other garden amphitheatres to get some ideas about how ours was used. Towards the end of March we dropped in on the gardens at Chiswick House - all very interesting.