but I've been told to go very slow we've been told to keep in first gear which is a
bit tricky when you're driving an automatic sometimes we get invites sometimes we get
invites which are absolutely too good to refuse this is one of them
oh my God that's a big bump as well
they knew there was a wheel here of some sort I believe yeah but nobody had done anything about
it it just was ignored we've bombed out the car yet that's what I'm concerned about it
horizontal position here you may remember we did a video a little while back on the Wey
and Arun Canal really joyous video to make and choose the exciting day there was so
much to see one of the things that we saw along that Adventure was something called
lording's lock and we just expected to see a normal Canal lock but we didn't we saw a
water wheel we couldn't really figure out what exactly was going on there other than
maybe it was some crazy Victorian attempt to get water out of the river Arun up into the canal
This was all built in 1780 there's an aqueduct and there's a lock and there's a wheel over
there was the Lock Keeper's House but that's all gone it lasted for about a hundred years
we think after that time the canal here was not working and was abandoned the wheel itself just
fell into disrepair and was abandoned it filled up ultimately with soil and muck it was left in
that way until mid-1990s we'll say 1995 when a man called Winston Harwood who is mentioned there came
down here and was instrumental in reconstructing this lock the aqueduct and also he found this
now when he found it all he found initially was brickwork on the floor
and nothing else there was nothing there nothing to show there was anything below
what happened is he dug down and he established
the walls the opening the opening and the circle for the wheel and that's all he had from that he
and a number of other Engineers worked out how the wheel worked and I'll show you how that works now
So let's get this started and whilst I help Brian get this in motion let me give you a
brief rundown on exactly how this works so here is the view from above selfish being at the top
of the diagram or photo now the Arun runs in two different ways here but what you really need
to know as it only used to run directly next to the wheel and this whole setup this is an
old map which highlights that flow of Direction Let's zoom in a bit here and mark the sides of
the wheel and the elite structure now the wheel needs water to power it as you can imagine now
when we lift its doors in a moment water from the Arun will drop down into the wheels pits
and in doing so it will start things turning via the paddles and the downward motion of the water
now assuming of course the water level in the Arun is high enough more on that in a little bit
so how does the water then get lifted up into the canal via the same will well you'll note
there are buckets on the upside of the wheel as it rotates around now this here
is where there is a second entrance for the water to flow in it flows along the
leat here pops inside another entrance to the side of the wheel and fills the buckets
what I don't know
so now the world's in motion we can get up a little bit closer to some
of the other parts and see exactly how they work
what I did was to take it all apart cut these new stainless steel flanges here manufactured which is
very large with a large number of bolts on the outside a new Central axis all the way through
so they can't move bolt it onto this very severe steel and the new bearings and what that's done is
to ensure that the wheel itself is held concentric and it can't deviate off that yeah whereas before
when they had the two stub axles they ended up doing this and Breaking All the bolts yeah
thank you
if you want why I have all trousers
if you look in here I'll get out of your way that's right you can actually see the bucket
coming through and it lines up exactly with this hole nobody's changed this hole this hole
is original with the original brickwork all I've done is to put plastic wood at the front
so the eagle-eyed viewer may have noticed that there isn't much water going in in fact there's
no water at all going in here this leak should be filled with water and the buckets should be
transferring it to the top of the wheel and ultimately emptying it into the canal what
exactly is going on here today when we got here Brian was really disappointed because straight
away he said ah it's not going to work because he looked at the rear just across there and the level
is about three or four inches off the top of the wheel I was thinking what does that mean surely
that will still work because that's very high up the river seems really high but the levels
at which it comes in at and there's two levels which we'll show you now on a bit of overlay
well first of all the water drops down as Brian explained that turns a will that's the easy part
but what we need if I jump down here into this Elite Feet a bit wet we need water to come in
there and we're about two or three inches too low for that so it shows how despite the wonderful
invention they come up with the 1780 it shows you it was potentially quite temperamental based
on the level of the water and we understand that even in 1780 it was still as changeable
so therefore instead of sporadic in terms of its use and we also think give it a couple of
months and we'll also be up to here because you can see where the water has been last winter so
again completely unusable so this despite being a wonderful sort of a Victorian or even Victorian or
1780s who was a king or queen in 1780. despite it being a very early Canal invention from the
1780s was still very temperamental so the owners of this canal are now spitting feathers because
they can't get the revenue because they can't get the freight yeah it's just a mess
all was not lost because just two weeks later Brian came back two more inches of
water on the Arun was available and well this did the trick as these shots show
back in business but what it has shown us is that what a short window was available
for this means to get water into the canal potentially just a few months of the year
Brian and his team have worked wonders over the last year or so and he did want us to
highlight it would not have been possible without a strong team of volunteers and
of course it should be mentioned the work here was made possible thanks to a generous
donation for which Wey and Arun Canal Trust is extremely grateful they've not only saved
a significant piece of Heritage here but they've also given it a new lease of life
Brian what can people do now to help out you and obviously the team and the rest of the Wey
and Arun Canal Society I guess that's the name there's a tremendous amount of work still to be
done every day on the way around canal and because of that we're always looking for volunteers I'm a
retired engineer and I've had great enjoyment working on this and great satisfaction we can
see that working with myself and other engineers and other people who are not Engineers on this
wheel it has been tremendous and through the generosity of the charity in London we were
able to do this so if people are as kind as that with their labor and with their money then the
whole Canal Trust will benefit no end wonderful thank you for your time thank you thank you
foreign