Bradford Rowing Club repairs Hirst Weir

Posted on January 20, 2016 by Steve Bottoms

As was flagged up by this story in yesterday’s Bradford Telegraph and Argus, there was emergency repair work taking place today on Hirst Weir.

This is Dr. Celia Hickman, current President of Bradford Amateur Rowing Club (BARC), as photographed for the T&A. The Rowing club owns and maintains the weir (through a limited liability holding company), because without the weir acting as a mini-dam for the stretch of the River Aire upstream up of it — the stretch coming down from Dowley Gap — there would be no viable rowing course. And right now, there is a pretty big hole in the dam…

As is clear from this picture, taken today under sunny blue skies, the hole in the weir – over towards the mill on the south side — means that the rest of the structure simply looks like a wall. The entire river is now flowing through the breach, as this picture (also from the T&A) shows…

The weir and rowing club featured on this blog in this entry from a year ago – here I noted that the club was trying to raise money for major works on the weir that would stabilise it for the long term. Unfortunately, however, this plan has been overtaken, by the need to make emergency repairs following the Boxing Day floods… There’s an emergency bill of £85,000, according to the T&A, and the club is still £20,000 short of this target but needs to get on the with the work before more permanent damage is done. (One wonders whether the £65k they do have is actually from the fundraising efforts for the longer-term solution…?)

When the weir was last damaged, during the high water of summer 2012, an emergency repair of the resulting breach was effected by plugging it with large stones dumped in by an excavator… Today there was no water at all flowing over those stones, because of the breach further along… Instead, there was an excavator actually sitting on those stones!

As you can see, though, the location of the breach makes it impossible for the heavy machinery to get anywhere near it, without risking further damage to the weir (and possibly risking the equipment and driver!).

Instead, then, it looks like the damage will need to be repaired by laboriously moving stones into position by hand… Slow and very hazardous work, given what the force of the current/undertow must be, going through the breach.

The T&A article reports on plans for installing a fish pass as part of the repair process. This is certainly part of the Rowing Club’s longer-term repair plans — as you can see in the scale model featured in my previous blog on this topic….

The ladder effect here is the fish pass, and the assembly of stones downstream of the weir is the basic idea for long term stability — creating a more gradual incline for the water, rather than a sudden drop that scours the river bottom (the central bit without stones, in black in the model, is simply to indicate the current drop – it wouldn’t be retained like this).

It seems unlikely, given the laborious patch-up work taking place today, that anything as sophisticated as a fish pass will be going in any time soon — whatever the T&A story says. But of course I’m no engineer and I could be completely wrong. Corrections gratefully welcomed… Anyway, let’s hope the repairs are effected smoothly and the weir is functioning again soon.

I’m grateful, again, to Eddie Lawler, for furnishing me with the (non-T&A) photos above – including this pleasingly arty one here… Thanks Eddie!

And thanks also to Martin Spiers, for providing the images below of the Rowing Club on the Boxing Day itself, the day of the flood… Here it is, completely cut off by water…

This shot is taken from the access road that leads to the club. Turning left through about 90 degrees, Martin also got this shot of the road blurring into the adjacent Loadpit Beck, as they both run downhill to the swollen Aire…

Finally, there’s this shot, taken from Martin’s home on Bowland Avenue, looking across towards the Rowing Club via the path that would normally cross Loadpit Beck where the little railing stands…

The weir, which should lie to the left of shot here beyond the trees, was totally submerged…

After the Flood: Higher Coach Road and Salts Sports

Posted on December 28, 2015 by Steve Bottoms

This was the scene this morning in Roberts Park, Saltaire. The Cricket Pitch is no longer a lake, with the river having returned to its normal boundaries… There’s just a great big puddle on the slightly lower ground nearer the footbridge. Much the same is true to the west of the park, on the Higher Coach Road estate…

All of the pictures in this post were taken by Eddie Lawler, who asked me if there was anything I’d particularly like pictures of. I said that, amongst all the images I’d gathered for this blog in the last couple of days, I hadn’t really seen any from Higher Coach Road… so off he went! Thanks Eddie. (I’m in Manchester and it hasn’t really been safe to travel to do my own eye-witnessing…)

The high watermark for the flood is pretty clear from the lines of light debris left behind on the banking up to the estate’s houses…

Thankfully, it looks like the water didn’t get as far as the houses, although at the far end, the houses on Bowland Avenue (physically the lowest on the estate) had a close shave…

Note the line of mole hills that appear immediately above the waterline… The moles have clearly been pushed uphill by the water! And that water keeps on coming… The river is back within its bounds, but look at the flow rate over Hirst Weir…

Note the debris in the tree here, and the snapped fence post…

Crossing the footbridge to the other side of the river, Eddie made his way back to his home in Saltaire via Salts Sports. This is the view back to the Coach Road estate from the far side… again, lots of debris in trees.

But turning around, and looking up towards the canal, just look at what’s been left on the Salts Sports Cricket Pitch!

That’ll clearly take some time and expense to clear up, but the more serious damage for Salts Sports has been done to the harder infrastructure. I’ll let the following images speak for themselves, noting only that the first one shows concrete slabs having been lifted off the wall and then dumped by the river…

Of course, Shipley/Saltaire has got off lightly by comparison with some other places in this week’s flooding (Hebden Bridge and Mytholmroyd just keep suffering over and over, it seems). But for everybody’s sake let’s just hope that the further rain forecast for the next couple of days doesn’t bring a reprise of the Christmas chaos.

More on the Aire in flood (inc. selected video links)

Posted on December 27, 2015 by Steve Bottoms

This was the scene last night, looking across the Aire from Roberts Park towards Saltaire… And then this morning, this strangely beautiful image of Cricket Pitch Lake in the sunshine was tweeted by Saltaire Festival. Note that the path in the foreground, in front of the Boathouse Inn, is no longer under water was it was yesterday…

It’s been reasonably dry today (Dec 27th), so the water has receded a bit, but it looks bad for Tuesday with more rain forecast to fall on already sodden ground. Fingers crossed.

Geoff Tynan posted this short video edit of the flooding in Shipley and Saltaire yesterday on Youtube. It really captures something of what was going on in the area. Begins with footage of Baildon Bridge’s arches completed obscured by water.

Another striking bit of video is this widely-screened BBC clip (I can’t paste it in as it doesn’t have an embed code… but you just have to click on the link). This shows the Aire just east of Baildon Bridge, flowing past the back of Wickes and up to the footbridge that runs between Dockfields and Lower Holme. A massive something is carried rapidly downstream until it crashes into the bridge with an almighty noise: the BBC say it’s a caravan but it looks to me more like a mobile burger stall or something of that sort? Anyway, this incident recalls residents’ memories of the exact same thing happening with a skip back in 2000… the fact that the river in flood flows north across the Green Lane cricket pitch and then back into the main channel via commercial/industrial properties means that some pretty big pieces of debris find their way into the river at this point. (Very dangerous!!) It can’t have come from any further upstream, because Baildon Bridge forms a barrier for large debris… as this next clip clearly demonstrates! Thanks to Rob Walsh for drawing my attention to this incident…

The area around Baildon Bridge was a bit calmer today, but here is an eerily silent Otley Road, at the junction with Green Lane, still covered by water in the sunshine…

And here was the scene just to the right of here, going west up Green Lane to junction with Coach Road…

As you can see, the area outside Baildon Rec is still a lake, and the four riverside houses of Aire Close are cut off completely. We send best wishes and hope for speedy return to normal for the residents there.

Downstream in Leeds, the Aire was at the highest level anyone can remember, but interestingly the new flood walls that have been being constructed this year as part of the Leeds FAS (Flood Alleviation Scheme) seem to have been doing their job. In this next video from Moss Travel TV, look particularly at the low wall in the foreground between 2.23 and 2.31 in the time coding… that’s been built recently around the edge of the Direct Line building (across the river from Granary Wharf, south of Leeds Station) and it seems to have been just high enough…?

The more severe flooding problems in Leeds were further downstream, it seems, in the area between Leeds Bridge and Clarence Dock, where the new defences have not yet been completed… (they’re scheduled for completion early next year). This video by Laurie Cooper-Murray captures that area after dark last night. It’s powerful not just for the visual footage but also for the eerie quietness of the soundtrack. There’s no added music or commentary, you just hear wind and water…

This still aerial image captures the extent of the flooding last night on East Street — a major link road just adjacent to the river on the north side (acr

Perhaps most startling for many Leeds residents, though, was the way that Kirkstall Road turned into a river last night. This is captured in full by Lauren Potts in her twitter feed… Look especially for the eerie “morning after” video she’s posted under the heading “Unbelievable scenes down here on Kirkstall Rd – it’s like something from an apocalypse film.” Many people were perhaps unaware that Kirkstall Road runs directly parallel with the Aire at valley bottom, since you can’t usually see the river for all the buildings. Not so last night… (Random fact: Lauren Potts is a BBC journalist based in Leeds, but also coincidentally a graduate of Manchester University’s Drama department, where I teach)

Finally for now, a couple of very artistically composed shots of the extent of flooding around Clarence Dock – and Leeds Lock adjacent to it. That’s the Knights Way Bridge in both shots. (Grabbed these off twitter… hope the photographer doesn’t mind!)

Today (Boxing Day 2015): River Aire in Flood

Posted on December 26, 2015 by Steve Bottoms

Just a few days ago I blogged about recent high water on the Aire through Shipley, and concerns about Baildon Bridge getting flooded. Well, here is a photo taken on Baildon Bridge today, looking across to the Baildon side and Otley Road’s junction with Green Lane… The whole place is underwater.

I haven’t been in the area today (I’m safe and dry in Manchester), but what follows is a collection of images that – like the one above – have been culled from twitter feeds (if anybody wishes to assert copyright, please let me know!). This next one is from a resident of Victoria Mills – immediately upstream on the Shipley side of the river. Here, the courtyard area at ground level has become a lake (with the bar completely submerged)…

A lot of the most spectacular images have, unsurprisingly, been taken in the Saltaire area, where there’s a clear view of the river from the park… Here is the park viewed from the roof of Half Moon Cafe… as in October 2000, the cricket pitch is completely submerged, and has become a lake… The ornamental llama looks like some kind of Loch Ness Monster parody… (this picture courtesy of my good friend Eddie Lawler)

The cricket pavilion, visible in the distance of the shot above, as seen more directly…

And just across the river at the same point, of course, the Boathouse Inn…

Note, in the shot of the Boathouse below, a little triangular flood warning sign… this is the same one visible in the shot of the park directly beneath. You really can’t tell where the river ends and the park begins. It’s all one.

But note also that there is a distinct difference between the relatively static water lapping around the edges of the park, and the main flow of the river under the footbridge… See the blue litter bin in the foreground of the last but one image…? Here it is again in the foreground of the shot below, taken a little later in the day (again by Eddie Lawler).

And here’s the same litter bin yet again, a little further under…This really gives a sense of the force of the water going by…

Another image of Eddie’s gives us the view of Salts Mill, looking back across from the park…

And here is the entrance to Salt’s New Mill, completely underwater… (Eddie again)

It’s quite a spectacle, of course, and who can blame people for turning out to look at it … (Although the safety warnings would advise against getting too close to fast flowing flood water.)

Meanwhile, downstream at Apperley Bridge, this was the view of the Aire…

Coming into Leeds, where the railway runs alongside the river through Kirkstall, the flood defences are better but the river was just barely contained…

And in the city centre, at the iconic Royal Armouries, this was the scene… The Leeds Lock in the foreground (and in the next picture), which is the first lock on the Aire/Calder Navigation, is completely submerged — as is the island that runs between the lock cut and the main river…

xThis next, aerial image, shows the same location from the other side of the river.. entrance to Clarence Dock in the top of the shot, the river and (submerged to left) island, and in the foreground the Canal and River Trust building at Fearns Wharf, with its car park totally submerged. So too was much of Neptune Street leading up to it…

Just upstream from here, looking back towards Crown Point Bridge (and the Armourites beyond it) you can see that the riverside pathway outside Brewery Wharf, to the right, is completely submerged also.

This next shot is from more or less the same spot, but looking upstream, underneath Centenary Bridge. Let’s hope those new flood defences at this spot were doing their job.

Just upstream again, the Aire at the highest I’ve ever seen it through Leeds…note how the drop that normally exists between the main river and the pond (former dock) in Victoria Quays, to the left, has been wiped out…

And this is a close up shot from Victoria Quays, with the footpath visible under the water, but no identifiable line between path, pond and river…

Finally, a shot from inside the Aire Bar, just across on the north side of the river from Victoria Quays… As you can see, the staff have improvised a flood marker on the window for the level the water had reached at 1pm this afternoon — at which point they abandoned the bar to the river, because the sandbags against the window were achieving little…

Tomorrow I’ll collate some more. Let’s hope the river will have subsided a little by then…

Season’s Soakings

Posted on December 20, 2015 by Steve Bottoms

Well it’s less than a week until Christmas, and it is mercifully dry outside… and oddly mild for this time of year. The whole country is enjoying a little welcome respite from the seemingly relentless onslaught of rain and storms over the last few weeks, that resulted in particular devastation in Cumbria just 2 weeks ago. The town of Cockermouth, we learned, has now experienced “1 in 100 year floods” a total of three times in the last ten years. Something up with the maths there… and all this as “climate change” was again in the news as the nations of the world met in Paris at “COP21” to try to agree how to apply a sticking plaster to a self-inflicted wound.

Closer to home, here’s a picture I snapped on my way to Baildon Woodbottom Working Men’s Club (for a Christmas party for Higher Coach Road residents — of which, more in a minute). Note how high the River Aire was, under Baildon Bridge right beside the club… (what you can’t tell, in a still photo, is just how FAST the water was moving!)

For the purposes of comparison, here’s an earlier photo of the river at normal flow levels, where a whole extra layer of the bridge stanchions is visible…

But club secretary Philip Moncaster assured me that the water level last Sunday had actually receded from where it was at the end of November. Here’s a shot of his own from back then, kindly donated for this blog…

As Philip says, as soon as the river gets as high as the main bridge, there is big trouble, because that solid concrete wall acts as a kind of dam, forcing the river elsewhere. This was the major flooding pinch point in the Shipley area, in both 2000 and 1947 (the big historical flood incidents in living memory). And circumstances could have been worse, recently, if the debris in the river had been in greater quantity– as this can contribute to the damming effect across the archways. In heavy rain, of course, the softening of the riverbanks upstream contributes to the risk of older trees becoming dislodged and falling into the river…

Philip is a real “hydro citizen” (to use the term attached to our current research project) because he has taken upon himself the responsibility of trying to get the (supposedly) “responsible agencies” to, er, take responsibility for clearing debris from the bridge… He copied to me a series of emails he has sent recently, from which the following are the edited highlights:

NOVEMBER 30 (to John Anderson at Bradford Council): For several years now I have had problems contacting Bradford Council regarding clearing of debris from under Baildon Bridge Otley Road. Your staff are unaware that the council are responsible for this problem and I am constantly told to contact The Rivers Authority or Yorkshire Water or The Environment Agency. Your emergency planning team told me to contact The friends of The River Aire. I rang cleansing today who told me to ring Yorkshire Water but I was not prepared to be fobbed off again so I asked to speak to a supervisor. I was connected to Sarah Clark who told me The council were not responsible but I insisted she was wrong and eventually I was given your name (Sarah Clark was very helpful and very pleasant to deal with and she returned my call as promised). I was told that you have had ‘Jaggers’ of Halifax recently to clear trees from the bridge although I have been watching since my club flooded on 22nd November and nothing has moved since then. A large tree is wedged under one of the three tunnels of the bridge and is collecting debris all the time. This obviously restricts the flow of the river and causes me sleepless nights at this time of year.

Philip had clearly been given the run-around by ill-informed Council staff, although to his credit, John Anderson replied the same day:

NOVEMBER 30: Philip, The responsibility for clearing debris off bridges is not clear. Responsibility lies somewhere between the riparian owner (Bradford Council if debris is under the bridge) and Environment Agency (responsible for ensuring free flow). That said, Bradford Council’s Highway Structures Unit do clear the bridges on the River Aire and have done so for many years. I have asked our Bridge Inspector to visit the bridge and have arranged with Jaggers to remove the tree as soon as it is safe to do so.

Understandably concerned at Mr. Anderson’s admission that “the responsibility . . . is not clear”, Philip wrote to Shipley’s three Green councillors about this, and received the following from one of them, Kevin Warnes:

DECEMBER 11: I agree that the lack of clarity about who is responsible is ridiculous. We’ll check with officers and come back to you.

Meanwhile, Philip also wrote to the Area Manager at the Environment Agency:

DECEMBER 7: FAO Mark Scott Heres a copy of John Anderson’s reply to the email I sent last week. Is it true that the environment agency are responsible for ensuring free flow ?

No response…

DECEMBER 10: Did you receive my email sent monday 7th dec? Your comments would be helpful.

This prompted a response of sorts…

DECEMBER 10: Dear Mr Moncaster, thankyou for your emails to Yorkshire Area Manager Mark Scott dated 7 and 10 December 2015. He is looking into your email and you will receive a response within 10 working days, which will be by Monday 21 December 2015. Many thanks, Deborah Broughton, Customer and Engagement Officer

To be fair to Mark Scott, of course, if he is the EA’s Area Manager for “Yorkshire” as a whole, then he has probably had bigger crises to address than Baildon Bridge in the last couple of weeks! But part of the problem here is the question of accountability and communication. A concerned citizen such as Philip should be able to establish more easily who to contact about such locally significant issues, and the EA surely needs public-facing staff who are promptly responsive to such enquiries (in the way that a local councillor like Kevin Warnes is).

DECEMBER 15: F.A.O. Mark Scott. I understand from your admin’ people that you intend to reply to my emails by 21st Dec. I guess you must be busy. While you consider your response I would like to share with you my thoughts regarding flooding at Baildon Bridge on the river Aire. Last week’s floods in the North West prompted great T.V. coverage and interviews with plenty of experts who all shared the opinion that water cannot be compressed and therefore flood defences in one area, causes problems further down stream. Blocking flood plains with large walls must in my novice opinion cause water to flow faster and deeper down stream (which is what all the experts were saying about Carlisle). Your office told me this was not the case on the river Aire! What about all the defence work at Stocksbridge etc? We have in recent years experienced a much more common ‘near flood’ experience and I suggest the above work has had some influence on that very worrying problem. Recent high water levels have seen Baildon Bridge almost at capacity, at the point where it becomes a dam. I would like my proposal to remove the wier at Baildon Bridge to be considered as a flood defence scheme that would have no detrimental effect down stream as regards causing potential flooding elsewhere.

This is, I think, an important instance of what they call “citizen science”: Philip’s personal observation, living beside the river, is that near-flood incidences have risen over recent years — for whatever reason (and he proposes one — the Stocksbridge flood defences). He also reiterates his conviction, previously discussed on this blog, that the removal of the weir immediately downstream of the bridge might help reduce flood risk by lowering the flow level of the river going through the bridge (since a weir is a low-level dam).

Now then, is there any scientific validity in either of these suggestions? We might be about to find out, because I have finally found a water engineer who is willing to assess the flow data for us… He’s a colleague of mine at Manchester University, and is doing this assessment “pro bono”, as it were (given that professional consultancy fees are exorbitant). The raw data, I’m pleased to say, has been provided to our project free of charge by the EA. This is thanks to the fact that I now have built up personal contact with some very responsive, very helpful people there… Let’s see what happens… (report ready around February)

[update: as of December 22nd, Philip had still received no reply from Mark Scott]

And meanwhile, let’s take a look at some of the EA’s newly installed flood defences downstream in Leeds (picture taken at the beginning of this month)…

That’s right, folks… along this stretch of the Aire, just outside the big Asda headquarters east of the Neville Street bridge, they have built a new flood wall that’s about, um, 10 inches high? And as you can see, they’ve put new railing on this new wall, without removing the old railings … so that when someone comes to do that, they’ll have to work around the new fence (or hang off the river wall…?). I came across a workman scrubbing mortar off the walkway by the new wall, who worked for “Heritage Masonry” – subcontracted to install true Yorkshire stone along this stretch (at no small cost), whose private opinion was that the costs of building this very low wall seem disproportionate to any potential benefits it might provide… Now, admittedly I’m being a bit naughty here… if you follow the walkway a bit further down, you get a better perspective:

As you can see here, the top of the new wall stays at a constant level, while the walkway itself does not. Hence the very low bit, as well as the more respectably “wall-like” bit here. What you really notice, though, touring the works along this city centre stretch of the river, is that the priority areas for defence seem to have been outside major corporations like Asda and Direct Line (whose new bit of wall is pictured below)… I expect that the City Council has been lobbied by these major players for better future defences… but that again begs the question of just who is listening to the concerns of ordinary citizens and riverside residents (especially those downstream of these works).

Back in Shipley…. Here’s the very swollen-looking River Aire immediately upstream of Baildon Bridge, looking across towards Woodbottom club just before last Sunday’s party… The club’s basement had again been flooded just the night before….

On a wet, cold, dark winter’s evening we were pleased that so many people made the effort to come down Coach Road to join our community party. We were also joined by some friends from some other areas such as Hirst Wood and Lower Holme. Our oldest guest was Margaret, who recently turned 90, our youngest was Maisie, at 4. The entertainment included a pub quiz, brilliantly hosted by Philip, and a short, well-received, perfectly-judged set by singer-songwriter Eddie Lawler (note the seasonal decor!):

Thanks to everyone who turned out, thanks to Philip and the club for hosting us, thanks to the Rocking Rudolph seasonal beer for – um – rocking us… and hats off especially to Stewart and Pat Gledhill, and to Pam Ruppe, the hardworking organisers behind both the party and the evolving Higher Coach Road Residents’ Action Group (H-CRAG!). Stewart told me that there are a number of new volunteers for the group and its committee, and we’re hoping this community initiative will continue to develop in the new year. Meanwhile, merry Christmas to all!

Stewart, Pat and Pam, pictured last month at the H-CRAG meeting hosted at St. Hughs, to which all 3 of the local Green councillors turned up in support!

Making Space for Water?

Posted on February 21, 2015 by Steve Bottoms

Spotted through the trees yesterday just downstream of Hirst Weir… Members of West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service (with their big red engine parked up in the car park of Bradford Rowing Club). I’m hazarding a guess that this was a training exercise for coping with flood conditions. A couple of weeks I heard a presentation from Humberside Fire and Rescue about how poorly prepared firemen are for working in flood conditions — even though flooding is likely to become an increasing problem in coming years, with climate change. Hull, of course, has an ongoing, near-annual problem with flooding (the presenter described it as “the plughole of England”), but since flood conditions are so difficult to simulate in normal circumstances, training is an issue. Presumably this is why these WYFR folk were stomping around near the roiling waters of Hirst Weir, but in Hull they have an altogether more elaborate plan – to build The Ark. No, not Noah’s ark, but a big water simulator… a kind of theatre for flooding… which sounds quite exciting!

We don’t have any project plans on that scale, alas, but here’s a few updates on what we are up to. First off… I was passing Hirst weir on a walk with sound artist Jon Tipler, who is working with me to complete the downloadable Salt’s Waters audio-guide that will lead listeners from Salts Mill up to the ruins of Titus Salt Jr’s Milner Field house – via various waterways big and small. (This has been in development for a while, but we’re aiming to have it finished for Saltaire’s World Heritage Weekend in April.) Among other things, this guided walk passes along the grassy flood plain that runs next to the Higher Coach Road estate – and (as in our live performances of 2012-13) makes a case for seeing this 1950s estate as integral to the local heritage narrative. And in the last couple of weeks, we’ve also started to get back in touch with residents on the estate about another, related project. My colleague Lyze Dudley has been knocking on doors, chatting to people about our plans for a sort of festival event on the flood plain in June. The idea will be to try to get a real conversation going about what people would like to see done with this grassy area which gets so boggy, and which the Council now can’t afford to mow regularly either (what with the swingeing cuts they’ve had to implement). Various residents have put various dream schemes to us in previous discussions, so we’re going to see if we can facilitate any kind of agreement being reached, with a view to taking it forward. Of course, if the consensus is just to leave it alone, then we’ll do exactly that, and – as Lyze has found – there are certainly people who think that, since that area is always going to flood, it’s best just left as vacant as possible. But it’s also possible to design imaginative green spaces that are intended to flood — “making space for water”, they call it.

Here’s a picture I took last week on a walk along the flood plain in question. To the right is Dave Horsman, Shipley ward officer for Bradford Council, and to the left is John [didn’t get his surname] who works out of Northcliffe Park and is responsible for all the mowing and maintenance of Council grassland in the area. (The park keeper at Roberts Park is retiring, and – again thanks to the cuts – won’t be directly replaced, hence John now taking on this remit.) In the middle is Baz Kershaw, an old friend and colleague of mine who was visiting to look at the site, with a view to creating a “meadow meander” in the long grass as one of our events in June. It’s a sort of interactive art installation that invites you to take a maze-like walk specially prepared in areas of long grass. Baz has done this in a number of places now (he started off doing it in his own home in Devon), and it always gets great responses. We’re hoping it will help spark discussion about whether people want long or short grass, a wildflower meadow, etc.

And here’s another picture from a meeting last week, this time taken in the Rose Wharf headquarters of the engineering firm ARUP, in Leeds city centre. This graffiti art hoarding celebrates some of the major projects ARUP has been involved with recently – including (as you can see) the Leeds Arena, and the Rosebowl at Leeds Beckett University. (In Bradford, ARUP were also the key engineering consultants behind the City Park’s Mirror Pool.) They’re also involved with plans for the HS2 rail link (a bit controversial, that one), and are lead consultants on the Leeds Flood Alleviation Scheme (or FAS), which is now under construction, as of this month — and is due for completion in about two years. It was this that I was at ARUP to learn more about…

As you might expect, the Flood Alleviation Scheme is — at root — also based on the premise of “making space for water”. Specifically, the big old industrial weirs in Leeds central are going to be removed, and replaced by new, moveable weirs. In normal conditions, they’ll operate just like the old ones did (so that the navigation of the river using locks etc. can continue as it has done). But in flood conditions, these new weirs will basically collapse (they’ll be held up by the equivalent of deflatable air bags…), thereby dropping the water level and alleviating flood risk to the city centre. This will help obviate the need and the expense of building higher concrete walls, as in the earlier scheme vetoed by government a few years back (although there will also be some new riverside construction designed to complement the work of the new weirs).

Apparently, collapsible weirs have been used elsewhere in the world for the sake of hydro power installations, but to date they have not been used as part of a flood alleviation scheme — so this is a first. I find it intriguing, though, that this scheme basically confirms that there can be a relationship between weir removal and lowering flood risk. This is the exact same logic that our friends at Baildon Woodbottom Working Men’s Club have used to argue for taking out the weir just downstream of Baildon Bridge — so as to mitigate their own risk of flooding at the club, and to help prevent the Bridge itself from becoming impassable as it last did in 2000. To date, though, the responsible agencies haven’t seemed very interested in this weir removal suggestion… That’s another little project we’re working on, if we can get the scientific data needed to show whether or not this is a viable proposition.

So, to sum up – we have various irons in the fire at the moment, each attempting to respond to ideas put to us by people living near the river. It remains to be seen which of these strands will produce any useful results, but I guess that is the nature of an exploratory research project like this one…

Upstream of Hirst Weir

Posted on December 23, 2014 by Steve Bottoms

Season’s greetings from the Multi-Story Water team! Here’s a little watery (rather than snowy) Christmas card image…

This was taken last Friday, December 19th, on the bank of the Aire outside the Bradford Rowing Club (right). It had been raining in the Bradford area, but it must have been raining a whole lot more further upstream, because as you can see the river was high enough to have broken its banks here. Cyclists were having to navigate around the waterlogged path (see immmediate foreground). Meanwhile, just a few yards downstream, this was the view of Hirst Weir…

The water’s so high that in the foreground the weir has almost disappeared. Those familiar with this weir will remember that it was seriously damaged during the high water of summer 2012, necessitating a patch-up repair job by the rowing club (which now owns the whole of the weir – under the holding company Hirst Weir Ltd.). A huge pile of rocks was lowered into the river on the nearside (nearside for this photo), making a more gradual descent for the water. In this shot above the rocks are, unusually, all but invisible because of the height of the river. Now, take look at this…

This is the model box owned by the rowing club, showing their design for the planned, permanent reconstruction job on the weir. (For bearings: the mill is bottom right, the mouth of Loadpit Beck top right.) As you can see, the engineering solution being proposed is essentially to extend the use of loose rocks across the full width of the river, downstream of the weir, so as to make the water’s descent more gradual and thus less impactful on the river bed. (The middle section in the model, without loose stones, is there simply to illustrate the height of the drop at present – it won’t be built like that!). The laddered element at the top of the image is a fish pass design, which has helped secure Environment Agency approval for the plans. One can imagine, more broadly, that the EA approves of the design anyway, since the more gradual decline being created for the ‘new’ riverbed achieves the next best thing to a restoration of the river’s natural flow (presumably over time the river will wear the rocks themselves smoother, deposit silts on them, etc). Of course, the one thing the rowing club would not countenance is the removal of the weir, since their activities are entirely dependent on the 650m stretch of straight, flat water upstream that it permits on the upstream side. Anything less than that and they wouldn’t have a viable racing course (as it is, 650 is a modest sprint, compared to the international standard 2000m course at, say, Eton Dorney). It’s for this very reason – the centrality of the weir to the club’s existence – that they took over responsibility for the whole weir a number of years ago. Previously of course it belonged to the mill and its inheritors, but after previous damage to the weir in 2002, a repair grant from Sport England could only be secured if the weir was legally a public rather than private asset. Hence the club taking on responsibility — they they sensibly ensured arm’s-length liability by setting up the holding company.

If you’re wondering how I know so much about this all of a sudden, it’s because of meeting this man, Barry Wood (below). Barry is a self-effacing sort of person who didn’t really want his picture taken, but was happy to be seen in long shot surrounded by this view of the upstairs of the clubhouse. He has been a member here since 1957 — that’s 57 years! — so what he doesn’t know about this rowing club isn’t worth knowing…

I’d been advised by my friend Eddie Lawler that Barry was the man to speak to about the club and its history, since we want to include something about it in the audio tour of the area that we’re developing (see previous post). Barry to be very generous with his time and thoughts, and it was a treat to talk to him. I didn’t like to ask a gentleman his age, but Barry says he had already been through a full education and National Service before joining the club, so he must now be pushing 80. You wouldn’t know it to look at him, though, and he maintains a very active role in the club — indeed he’s one of the three company directors of Hirst Weir Ltd!

No less extraordinary is the clubhouse itself — originally built in 1893 on the south side of the river, it was dismantled brick by brick and ferried across the river in 1922, to be built exactly as it had been (except that, now facing south, they moved the roof gable to the other end of the building so that it was still facing upstream to the racing!). This reconstruction was forced when the new owners of Hirst Mill demanded the club vacate their land, but Salts of Saltaire allowed them a spot on the opposite bank (which the club now owns). When Barry came here in 1957, the clubhouse was still very simple — with no gas, no electric, no running water — all of which has been installed during his time with them.

Now the next priority is to get that weir fixed up permanently, and for this, funds are going to be urgently needed. Hence this banner poster in the clubhouse itself…

If you can chip anything in to the appeal, please do! I’m sure the rowing club would appreciate the gift, because the river isn’t going to stop pressuring at that weir any time soon…

Engineering the River Bank?

Posted on August 10, 2014 by Steve Bottoms

This summer we’ve seen two quite contrasting changes to the north bank of the Aire in the Shipley-Baildon area. East of Baildon Bridge there’s been new building work on the former mill site at Lower Holme — a location this blog has observed with interest for some time (see other posts categorised under ‘Lower Holme’). The long-derelict site is finally being turned into a commercial precinct with buildings and parking for Wickes and KFC, but the build was delayed for quite a while and this is part of the reason why:

The public footpath along the river, running along the edge of the site, is now flanked by this wall of caged rubble cubes — stacked to head height. Apparently the Environment Agency belatedly insisted on this being erected as a condition of the building permit. The ground on which the Wickes building is going up (you can see the frame in the top right of the shot above) has also had to be bulked up to the height of the wall on the other side. The theory, apparently, is that this will act as a flood defence for the site. But what you can’t quite tell from this photograph is that it’s already quite a drop from the footpath to the river. According to local residents, in the floods of 2000 (the most extreme weather event in these parts in most people’s living memory), the swollen river only just topped the level of the footpath. So it would take a really pretty apocalyptic flood to get anywhere near the top of these new rubble cubes.

You can see in this shot how the land naturally rose up further from the path anyway (here the footpath continues on the left of the shot, along the riverbank; the white and blue metal fencing between path and blocks is a remnant of the former site fencing put up by the previous developers, Mandale). So I can’t help but feeling this is flood defence overkill… especially when you bear in mind that the residents in Lower Holme weren’t affected by surface water in 2000 anyway, but by water coming up through their basements (and nearly reaching their electricity meters, rather scarily!). This whole area of land is right on the water table, so in flood conditions water literally seeps up through the floor, given half a chance. The ground is apparently so porous that Lynda, who lives in the end gable house nearest the river, remembers finding tiny fish swimming around in her basement during the flood – somehow they had filtered their way through the earth, even though the house is a good hundred yards from the river. A great story, and one that slightly begs the question (at least to a layman like myself) of what exactly the new defences are supposed to accomplish. They seem almost militaristic, as if the river is some assaulting army, laying siege to the land. I wonder if those tiddlers could get in between the blocks? 😉

A little upstream, at the western end of Shipley/Baildon catchment, we’ve seen a constrasting scenario… not ‘overkill’ but a kind of benign neglect. This picture is of the grassy flood plain area between the river (off to the left of this shot) and the Higher Coach Road housing estate. First posted on this blog at the end of June, the photo shows how the grass had been left to grow up into a meadow, with the only mowing occurring along the line of the traditional riverbank path, to the left of shot. (It’s not technically even a path – it’s usually just a ‘desire line’ tracked into the grass, so being marked out by mowing has almost made it seem more official.) Subsequent to my earlier post, I did look into why this long stretch had been left unmowed, because I wondered if there was some new planning rationale for it… And at the beginning of July I met on site with these lovely people:

Left to right here are Lyze (pronounced Lizzie) Dudley, our new research associate on the MSW project; Dave Horsman, from the Shipley Area Committee of Bradford Council; and Malcolm Wright, who is the Council’s head of parks and landscaping in the area. Based at the Park Lodge in Roberts Park, Malcolm is – it turns out – also responsible for the grass on the estate. And the reason it didn’t get mown this year was basically because of budget cuts within the Council (it’s the age of austerity…), which mean that Malcolm only has one man to send out to mow, instead of two. And in fact, only a few days before we met, one man went to mow (went to mow a meadow), with the result that we were looking at this:

Freshly cut hay… not meadow grass… And the reason for it being cut at this point was simply, Malcolm told us, because he had received a complaint from someone on the estate about the length of the grass — so he decided to prioritise doing something about it. There are a couple of ironies at work here… One is that I’m quite sure that some other people living on the estate will have quite liked the meadow effect. (See for example the comment that was posted on the end of my June 24th blog post.) The other is that Lyze and I had arranged to meet Dave and Malcolm specifically because we were interested in the meadow grass… The main reason for this is that our research in the area in the last couple of years uncovered quite a degree of interest among residents in something more creative and interesting being done with this lumpy, uneven, often boggy grassland. Back in September 2012 we held a sort of creative consultation event (the ‘Higher Coach Road beach party‘) which resulted in a painted map of the area being marked up as follows by residents:

As you can see, we were presented with the idea of a “reed wetland bog”, with a “pond in [the] area that floods” (this refers to an especially boggy area of the flood plain just down the slope from Troutbeck Avenue). There was quite a bit of support for this idea (it originated with Theresa, I think, from Derwent Avenue), which would also amount to a form of ‘soft engineering’ of flood defences — since if designed right a layout of ponds, reeds, bushes and trees would enhance the flood storage capacity of the land here… whereas monoculture grass does little or nothing to prevent downhill run-off from just carrying straight on into the river and adding to the weight of water being carried downstream… Or at least, I think that’s the theory. Anyway, hopefully it’s now apparent what kind of contrast I’m trying to draw here with the questionable new ‘hard’ engineering downstream at Lower Holme.

The point here is that our earlier conversations with residents on the estate could only ever be that – conversations – since Multi-Story Water was originally only a one-year project (2012-13). But having now secured new funding for three years from 2014-17, we’re in a position to see if we can help facilitate some further discussion towards (just maybe!) actual changes. And the meadow grass had struck me as a great opportunity to kick something off, because most of the residents will have had opinions about it, pro or con (or both). A wildflower meadow is not a reed wetland, but it’s certainly a step towards more biodiversity… And I thought I had just the man to help us animate the meadow a bit, to spark debate. (See this blog page here for an account of Baz Kershaw and his ‘meadow meander’ – a temporary meadow area that he developed as a kind of theatrical exhibit at Leeds University in 2012). Malcolm Wright, the parks and landscaping chief pictured above, turned out to be very supportive of us doing something to engage residents in a discussion about how to treat this area in future — and he offered to provide us with materials to illustrate the various different types of wildflower meadow and other alternative grassland arrangments that are used in other parts of Bradford… So this would really present people with choices to consider. But…

… in this photograph, taken just last week, you can see that the grass hasn’t really grown all that much in the five weeks since it was last mown. A few hay-like stalks appearing, but basically this grass is barely above ankle height. We had been planning to try to arrange an event involving Baz and others this coming September (next month). But it’s pretty clear that the grass won’t have grown into anything resembling a meadow by then…

All this brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “watching the grass grow”. But with hindsight it may be no bad thing that we’ve had to ditch our tentative plans for September. We’re now looking at planning ahead for an event next May or June, when the grass, if left, will be at its most springily meadow-like. This means that we can try to develop conversations with the residents in the run-up to this event, involving people properly in the planning, rather than simply using an event as a way to initiate conversations… It’s probably better this way round.

Weir Today, Gone Tomorrow?

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Steve Bottoms

Today, perhaps, we may just have started something. I met with Philip Moncaster (left) and Paul Gaskell (right) at the weir just downstream of Baildon Bridge (between their heads), and we discussed the possibilities for getting the weir removed once and for all. This has long been a goal of Philip’s, who lives right on the river upstream of the bridge, and is also secretary of the Baildon Woodbottom Working Men’s Club, which stands almost next to the bridge. (Anyone who came along on the “Red Route” section of our Multi-Story Water performance tour of the area will remember that we based one of our main characters on Philip.) He believes that getting rid of the weir would significantly reduce flood risk at both the club and his home — and in all probability he’s right. Baildon Bridge is the major flooding pinch point in the Shipley/Baildon area (this was the case in both 2000 and 1947), because debris in the river can all too easily get caught around and across its thick concrete stanchions. This can create a dam effect, which the solid-walled sides of the road bridge itself only add to…

When the bridge turns into a dam, the water simply re-routes itself off around the club and across the adjacent cricket pitch (people were swimming on it in 2000, Philip mentioned!). But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that if the water level going under the bridge was lower to start with, the level of flood risk would also be reduced. And taking the weir out would surely help to lower the water level, because a weir is itself a small dam that artificially raises the water level on the upstream side.

All this begs the question why the responsible authorities (mainly the Environment Agency and Bradford Council) have never done anything about this before. But for whatever reason, it simply isn’t on their “to do” list. Indeed, Philip has been told by the Council that if he wants to campaign for the weir’s removal, that is fine with them, but he would need to raise the money not only for the work, but for the consultation process that would allow the work to be done. Unsurprisingly, Philip is unimpressed with this response!

This is where Paul Gaskell comes in. Paul is based in Sheffield, and works for a charity called the Wild Trout Trust. I met him at a “think tank” workshop held this July by the Environment Agency, looking at “river stewardship”, and I learned then that one of the things Paul is particularly keen to campaign on is the removal of old weirs. For him, the major issue is not so much flood risk as the ecological health of the river itself. Weirs interrupt the natural “geomorphology” of a river’s flow, causing sediment deposits to build up on the upstream side, but conversely adding to river bed erosion on the downstream side – because water flowing over the top of the weir (minus its low-flowing sediments) tends to ‘dig into’ the bed as it comes down. All of this has consequences for the general health of the river, and of course weirs particularly affect the ability of fish to move up and downstream (hence the Wild Trout Trust interest).

Because Paul knows so much about all this — and particularly about the kinds of obstacles that get thrown up to prevent weirs being taken out — I invited him up to Shipley to meet with Philip. Maybe Paul could point Philip in the direction of the right people to help him overcome the administrative inertia. What was clear from our very positive meeting was that we can all see benefits in our putting some energy into pursuing this. Obviously, for Philip, it’s a longstanding concern, but Paul also thinks that this particular weir could make for a valuable “case study” site that might help prompt further action elsewhere. One of the blockers to action on weirs that he has often encountered is the “heritage” dimension, whereby people think that weirs represent an important part of their local industrial heritage (although apparently there are ways to remove them that still leave in a sort of ghost trace of the “heritage” structure, if desired…). With the Saltaire World Heritage Site only a few hundred yards upstream, the removal of this weir could be particularly interesting from the “cultural” point of view — and that is of course where my personal interests lie, as a theatre-maker and researcher: could we make the process of removing the weir into a “creative process” of sorts, one aimed at developing dialogue and understanding around the relationship of human heritage and the natural environment? (Perhaps, when Philip eventually gets to climb in and smash it up, we can stage a bit of a party around the action! … And yes, he’s keen to be involved in the work itself – as a builder he knows quite a bit about both construction and destruction…)

All of that said, Philip himself is not sure that local people care too much about this particular weir, or any heritage value it might be seen to have. He’s collected hundreds of signatures on a petition for its removal, and has encountered only a couple of objectors. In all likelihood, the big obstacle is going to be the red tape — the consultations around what the downsides to the weir’s removal might be. Ironically enough, Paul believes that the main issue is likely to be the bridge. The removal of the weir would probably mean water flowing downstream a little faster at this point, and there’s a chance (small!) that this might impact negatively on the bridge’s foundations. The Environment Agency, Philip notes, will also want to establish whether or not anyone downstream will be negatively affected by the weir’s removal, although it is hard to see how that could be the case.

Basically the outcome of our meeting was that taking out this weir is probably a win-win from every angle, and that it’s the red tape that will be the main problem to getting it done. Paul also noted, however, that some regulations may be working in our interests. One of the provisions of the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) is that governments and local authorities need to work towards freer movement for fish up and down rivers (for good ecological reasons besides happy fish), and indeed fines can be levied if not enough is being done to pursue this goal. This was news to Philip, who was delighted to hear that there is a stick as well as a carrot for the relevant authoritiees… In some places, Paul mentioned, fish passes have been built onto weirs to address the WFD requirements. And yet the process of designing, consulting on and building a new fish pass is vastly more expensive — and less ecologically beneficial — than simply removing a weir. Paul mentioned that a fish pass can cost around a quarter of a million pounds — as against the twenty or thirty thousand it costs to remove a weir. According to Philip, the actual construction of this weir at Shipley cost less than £400, back in the day… How times change.

So numbers were exchanged, diaries consulted, and the beginnings of an action plan agreed. We’re all very busy over the next couple of months, but hopefully our meeting will be the beginning of something… Please do get in touch if you’d like to help!

Yvonne Roberts’s photographic rendering of the weir from the Shipley side.

Mirror Mirror, on the floor…

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Steve Bottoms

Here’s Bradford’s city centre Mirror Pool, the City Hall behind it, yesterday afternoon as the sun shone. In the foreground is Andy from Pro-Audio, on the phone trying to figure out why he can’t get control of the fountains at his lighting desk. We were setting up for last night’s Blue Mirror performance – commissioned by Bradford Council’s Chief Drainage Engineer Tony Poole, to help open the Flood ResilienCity conference taking place in this city this week, with delegates from across Europe (don’t ask me about the weird spelling…). I’m such an idiot that this is the only picture I remembered to take – I got a bit preoccupied with just getting the show to happen – so we’ll have to wait for Simon Warner’s official pics to see what it all looked like… (from his point of view)

The brief had been to make a theatrical presentation for the Mirror Pool, on flood-related themes… In keeping with my own creative interests, I had interpreted this in site-specific terms, on two levels: (1) the Mirror Pool area is a site in which you frequently see children splashing about having fun, so it seemed to me that an appropriate creative response would involve children as performers; (2) that Bradford’s flood risk problems largely arise in areas where the river itself is invisible – submerged beneath the city in Victorian tunnels. Indeed the Beck actually passes by quite quote to the Mirror Pool, which according to the maps is in the risk area – yet the Mirror Pool (opened last year at a cost of millions) is the only water visible in the area. So I had set out to devise a performance that “made visible” something of the Bradford Beck river system, by thinking of the Pool as a kind of microcosm of the city…

With the help of the Council, we identified two primary schools in the west of Bradford – St. James and Crossley Hall – that were interested in participating in a project about rivers and flooding, leading to a performance. I wrote a previous blog entry about my scouting trip along Pitty Beck and Chellow Dean Beck, the two tributaries of Bradford Beck that pass near the schools. Subsequent to that visit, before the Easter holidays, I led two Year 5 classes from Crossley Hall on adventure trips along Chellow Dean, upstream towards the old Victorian reservoir — although on the second occasion we didn’t get that far because we got caught in a snowstorm and had to turn back! In fact in this picture below, if you look closely, you can see class teacher Miss Taylor gesturing with her thumb to pull everybody back in the opposite direction…

Only minutes earlier it had been much less snowy, as you can see from this image (taken by Miss Taylor, I think – who kindly supplied all of the pictures below), as the some of the children and I pick our way across the stream in the Chellow Dean wetlands area…

In fact, the weather got so terrible in that period just before the Easter break that I twice had to cancel the planned walk along Pitty Beck with the St. James Year 5 class, which we only finally did a few weeks ago. As a result, St. James have only been doing their river project work this term – too late to feed it directly into making the performance itself. The Crossley Hall children, however, did some beautiful natural art work in response to the river trip… And they also learned about the water cycle, and how their bit of river fits into the wider geography of water movement – as illustrated by this picture below…

They also did some really amazing expressive writing, some of it in semi-pictorial form, like this piece below… from which I directed lifted quite a bit of the wording, to weave into our performance text…

The raindrop is “falling from the sky” to “meet my destiny”, while the river is saying “come on, come on”, welcoming it down: “I’m here for you and I always will be…” (There’s a pretty profound sense of ecological consciousness in there that adults might do well to think about!) Finally, the kids also did some imagining of fictional creatures that might live in or around the river, like this scary looking fellow… This gave me the idea to use some fantastical creatures in our performance – hence the “Sewage Goblins”, the “Elves of Industrial Effluent” and “the Foul Flies of Fly Tipping” – for which the children also made masks to perform in. These three groups (the three class groups involved) were the hideous minions of “the Evil Queen of Concrete”, who has smothered Bradford Beck (“Just call me Brad”) and family of little Becks… “Moo-ha-ha-ha!”

The moo-ha-ha was the very distinctive, very funny laugh for the Evil Queen decided on by Neiha (sorry – not sure of correct spelling), from Miss Butler’s Crossley Hall class. She’s a very sweet, shy girl but she was brilliant as “Elvira” on Monday night – word perfect too! She brought her evil minions down from 3 directions on Brad Beck (Maneeb, a small but very feisty boy, again perfect for the part – and again I don’t know how to spell his name) and his family. The other speaking parts with lines to learn were “Hope” and “Dwayne” – Annam and Aiden from St. James – who appeared at the end of the play to exhort us all to do more to “be the friends of Bradford Beck…” – to clean it up and make it happy. (The script was originally Hope and Faith, but Mr. Wilson wanted us to use a boy, so…). These guys too were great. It was strange watching these speakers in the middle of the Mirror Pool because they seemed so far away in this big space: the radio mikes meant we could hear every word crystal clear, though, and none of them fluffed a line!

Most of the script (which you can read here, if you like) was written to be delivered by narrators – one from each of the three classes involved – who could read from clipboards and so didn’t need to memorise lines. Uzair and Laiba (from Crossley Hall) and Iqra (St. James) all did a tremendous job with this, again speaking steadily and clearly so that the whole narrative came across clearly even in the slightly windy conditions. The challenge in writing the script for them had been to create something that said something about the Bradford Beck system – its geography and its history, and potential flood risk – in a way that would be clear to the children and make sense coming from them as speakers. I think for the most part we managed this, and we had some very positive feedback from some of the conference people about how well we’d balanced the positives and negatives in thinking about the state of the river and its potential risks.

The trickiest part of the whole process, though, was the choreography. The Mirror Pool is a big space to work in, so I always knew we had to make something that was primarily visual and movement-based (with music, narration and fountains…). I was lucky enough to be able to bring in Lucy Hind, a really wonderful movement director (worked on the Paralympic opening ceremony last year!) who was great with the kids and fun to collaborate with. It was very interesting to watch her gauging what the kids could cope with, movement-wise, and adapting accordingly. Our problem, though, was that we had quite limited rehearsal time at the schools (quite rightly – they have other things to be teaching these children!), and that we had extremely limited rehearsal time actually on site at the Mirror Pool… The first time the kids came together to work on it there was after school on Monday, shortly before we performed for our audience. So the results, in all honesty, were a little bit more chaotic than Lucy and I hoped… We just hadn’t had the time to work out all the details on site, and the kids were getting distracted pretty easily by the opportunity to splash about! (well they would, they’re 9 and 10!). What they lacked in rigorously drilled precision, though, they more than made up for in enthusiasm and energy, especially when it came to the splashing. And there were some sections of the show that looked really great – with the three classes stretched out along the three arms of the “Y” path that cuts across the pool, all twirling round, stamping feet, raising arms, etc. It’ll be fascinating to see how the pictures turn out…

I was also pleased to see that my “river trains” idea worked out OK. In this bit, different groups of children – linked in ‘conga’ lines with hands on shoulders – converged on the middle of the space from different directions, in a sort of mapping out of how the different tributary becks flow into Bradford Beck. The idea was that we’d locate the city centre in the middle of this map with a mini version of the Mirror Pool itself and the buildings around it (made by the children from boxes etc.). Unfortunately, the wind caught some of the models, and the kids carrying them had too much ground to cover for the narration to gel with what they were doing… But the big long river train came together beautifully. Geographically speaking, it ended up heading off somewhere towards “Leeds” instead of “north” towards “Shipley”, but I’m sure I was probably the only person watching who noticed this particular subtlety…

So, key learning point: children have less spatial awareness than you assume they will, especially in a big space. They’ll also naturally group together to feel safer when exposed, so instructions like “spread out across the space” are largely lost on them. (Maybe these are concepts that we grow into as we get older.) All that said though, I think these children did an amazing job considering the limited time we had and the scale of the task we gave them! And most important of all, they really seemed to have fun on the day, especially during the bit where they got to go bonkers in the water.

So thankyou Lucy, thankyou Mr. Wilson, Miss Taylor and Miss Butler, and thankyou most of all the Year 5 children of Crossley Hall and St James (some of whom I have become very fond of, and will miss!). All in all, it was quite an experience, and a lot of fun too!

Multi-Story Water

Celebrating Shipley and its waterways

Category Archives: Flood