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10. Machine house progress. Getting the roof on, though the framing is still being extended. The lancashire boilerhouse frames are going up behind, as is the reinforcing steel for the coal bunkers. In the distance can be seen the chimneys of one of the cement works, probably the Burham Brick Lime and Cement Co.
In the foreground, excavation and foundations for the beaterfloor and turbine house.
On the far left, a Midland Railway open wagon stands on a temporary standard gauge siding laid at 90 degrees to the mill siding parallel to the SECR mainline. Several temporary sidings were laid like this to bring materials right up to and into the buildings, as will be evident in later photos (and shown in one already posted on the Aylesford Paper Mills – Early view of East Mill thread, an LNWR open wagon within the machine house north end).
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9. Work starts on the chimney. This photo looks out of sequence and should precede no 8.
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8. Progress on the machine house frame, with the chimney well advanced beyond. There is a lot of bracing for the frame as it will not be rigid until the walls are in-filled.
7. Machine house frame steel work being erected. The pole derrick to lift the roof trusses is mounted on narrow gauge wagon chassis so it can be moved from frame to frame, it is ballasted with piles of bricks. The Ferry is visible through the frame of no 1 mc annexe. That may be a pile driver beyond, putting in piles for the wharf beyond the Ferry, which will be filled in later with spoil from the pulp yard wharf.
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6. Base of the chimney shaft, this will be part of the remains found by Kevin Harrild when preparing for the new East Mill effluent plant in the 1980s. V skips on the wharf wall in the background.
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5. Another view of the foundations, river bank in the background, the trees are on the far side of the river. A crane is working on the wharf wall.
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4. 1/2 Machine house foundations, looking roughly south west.
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3. The Winget concrete mixing plant. Ballast was excavated on site, the pit became the main process water reservoir, known as ‘the ballast pit’.
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Photos 1 and 2 depict the commencement of building the wharf along the Medway middle cut, where the banks on the west side were cut back and the spoil used to fill in around the Ferry House Inn visible just beyond the crane. Standard gauge steam crane, narrow gauge tracks and V skip wagons used to move materials around the site – much as dumper trucks are used today.
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I have decided to post the early construction photographs on here, as there are 125 of them it will take a bit of time. I don’t know who holds the copyright to these and post them only for interest. Several have already been posted on this site, and others are to be found on other websites, thus there will be some duplication, the intention is to provide them in full.
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PM2 refiners. The front 2 are the Claflins installed around 1982? Previously PM2 used the rear two of which the wide angle is visible, the Jordan is out of view behind the wide angle. The Claflins ran in parallel at around 4tph each, my recollection is that the wide angle and Jordan ran in series at 8tph – not bad for refiners said to be rated for 2tph.
The entry to the machine house is in the dark beyond, at the top of the steps down to the chest tops and machine floor.
Taking samples from the Claflins was a fraught exercise, the samples were taken from the 2″ gate valve visible at the lower rim of the refiner. The stub pipe leading to the valve would plug up under pressure so the gate had to be opened wide to clear it, then shut quickly before your feet were immersed in very hot stock – bearing in mind the stock had already passed through the hot dispersion unit on the island site, further heated by friction in the refiner, it was often 50 deg C or more.
To the left of the top of the ladder, you can see the bottom of 2mc backwater tank, and to the right the second tank. 1mc backwater tanks had been reused for storing rosin emulsion size – Hercules T-size 22/30P mainly. This replaced the BR45 saponified rosin supplied via ring main from the size plant beyond the end of the kraft beater floor range.
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Island site c.1985 or later, after installation of Tasster sludge dewatering plant, annotated.
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PM2 general arrangement 8tph basements (original pdf file >4MB)
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PM2 general arrangement 8tph 1975 (original pdf file >6MB)
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Photo 6. Showing parts of no 2 machine taken out into the old Stirling boilerhouse area for scrapping. Photo apparently taken from the end of the island site bridge with the end of the white beaterfloor / clay plant in the bottom left. The coal bunkers had been demolished and parts of the old salle rebuilt as a warehouse.
Also seen here is the 2 metre high flood wall constructed along the river bank, this was done to mitigate against flooding in the event of a high spring tide, high preceding rainfall, strong north east wind and closure of the Woolwich barrier forcing water up the Medway. Before the wall was raised we had had some close calls with water and effluent staff monitoring the rise of water backing up in no 1 and 2 east mill clarifier launders, ready to shut down the mill water supply to prevent the drains from backing up especially along Perimeter Road.
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