Winter Sports
Work begins: BLEC Rotor Rake grading and levelling prior to harrowing
Crackstone Mill - a farmer’s field prior to work commencing in July 2012
side has been absolutely perfect,” said Morgwn.
That construction was carried out by sportsturf contractor, Ecosol Turfcare, who won the tender which had been put out by the RFU and their appointed consultant engineer, PSD Agronomy’s John Hacker. “The RFU made the final decision on the contractor appointment, but we were happy as we knew the company had a good reputation, they were locally-based from Malmesbury, and had submitted a very thorough and comprehensive tender.” Ecosol Turfcare had initially been asked to inspect the site and assess its suitability for conversion before the club had even entered into purchase negotiations. “We advised that it would be possible, and that it would probably need a ‘cut and fill’ due to some of the more significant slopes present on the grassland,” said the company’s MD, Bretton King. “Then, due
Steady work: BLEC Stone Burier on the ploughed, harrowed,graded and levelled soil
to it being in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the planning permission placed restrictions on the type of work that could be done and that included a ban on cut and fill! So, when PSD invited tenders, we were faced with a different specification and challenge.” Once the ponies had been removed, a local farmer mowed the overgrown pasture and made round bale silage to clear it. This enabled the Ecosol team to move in to apply glyphosate on 5 July 2012 and progress, seven days later, by ploughing it, discing and power harrowing. This revealed that the brashy soil was as shallow as 150mm in places, causing plough shares to bounce along the bedrock! “We knew it required an awful lot of work to transform it from fields to top class pitches,” said Tony Dowie, Minchinhampton grounds manager, “but we were confident in the contractors
ability to bring it about.” The foundations for the clubhouse were
excavated and the 300 tonnes of resulting topsoil were spread on the lowest part of the area (designated for pitch number 2) to partly counteract the inability to do cut and fill operations. Following an initial grading, manual
stone removal took place (some as big as headstones!) which netted over twelve tonnes of beautiful drystone walling material. The whole site was then graded more finely to remove the old hedge line and surface undulations so that the 1st XV and 2nd XV pitches had longitudinal falls of 1:110 and 1:83 respectively with transverse falls of 1:46 and 1:42. Once completed, the painstakingly slow BLECavator stone burier was then deployed to bury all stone greater than 25mm in size. Nevertheless, it worked well despite the volume of rock, as the material was successfully buried 150mm
OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2013 PC 69
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