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MP joins in IWA Lichfield Branch work party

Apart from supporting the project, Mr Burley came to work as part of his volunteering commitment for the community. Darren Green – who also did his bit – came to inspect the work already done and, with his volunteer leader Stuart Collins, to discuss future plans for the area. Among the volunteers was also a community police officer who attends regularly.

The clearance of ground vegetation, revealing the superb engineering brick wharf surface, led to the discovering of a previously unknown feature – a section of narrow gauge (two-foot wide) railway line; not only historically interesting but intriguing in that it runs in the direction of the aqueduct and the river.

Apart from traffic on the canal, a short isolated section of the River Trent was navigable upstream of the aqueduct to a mill. It is quite well known that there was transshipment between craft on the canal and the river near this location and heritage experts will examine the railway line and try and discover its purpose.

IWA Lichfield Branch has already received an award for its work in the Rugeley area and on the following Sunday its volunteers were again active nearer the town centre undertaking ground clearance work and repairs to the towpath and touching up paintwork on the Brereton Railway Bridge.