Drainage works and restoration of the Henbury Wall in Highbury Park

Last week I signed off the report authorising £100,000 of works in Highbury Park. These works will begin in February and, weather permitting, be completed by the end of April.

The works are as follows:

1) Restoration of the Henbury Wall. The Henbury Wall dates from 1780, when a formal garden was created here as part of the Henbury estate. The lily pond to the rear of the wall was also part of these formal gardens.

A large section of the wall collapsed earlier this year, under the weight of ivy growth. Also the rear section of the wall has been sprayed with graffiti.

As you can see from the attached pdf, the following will be done

a) The collapsed section of wall will be rebuilt using the original bricks

b) any degraded bricks in the rest of the wall will be carefully replaced with replicas

c) large sections of the wall re-pointed

d) the graffiti removed

2) Improvements to the drainage in the land immediately to the north of the main pond. This area is on the Highbury Trust estate and forms part of the original Highbury estate. The drainage problems in this part of the park are associated with new springs appearing in recent years, which results in little streams of water flowing over the path that runs along the edge of the pond. This constant flow of water, presents a health and safety during frosty weather, when the path becomes a sheet of ice.

Since this work is taking place on Highbury Trust land, permission has been sought from the Charities and Trust Sub-Committee to do this work at no cost to the Trust itself. The work will include the following.

a) The laying down of a network of new drainage pipes immediately to the north of the pond.

b) Clearing out, where possible, the present drainage pipes and manholes in this area.

c) Laying new drainage pipes underneath the path, so as to direct the water into the pond.

d) De-silting a large section of the head pond, immediately to the east of the main pond. We are hoping that with a large body of water, we can get the mini-waterfall in this location fully working again.

As forementioned this work is costing £100,000. This will still leave £20,000 unspent from the Section 106 monies provided for this project. This money will remained unallocated, incase any unforeseen difficulties occur with the work above. If everything does runs to budget, then it is intended to spend the remaining £20,000 on resolving several outstanding drainage issues on the rest of the Highbury Trust land, especially in the Bee Hive area.