13 March - A slow week in Belvedere and Abbey Wood
Lesnes Abbey continues to make slow progress,
the main entrance in Abbey Road has occupied several men all week.
The Monk’s garden has been adorned with some new stone features and the Visitor
Centre appears to have been partially glazed on its northern aspect; not easy to
see or photograph over the high wooden fence. It looks as though the roof is nearing completion too.
As noted previously, it is possible to imagine it all looking very attractive
when completed but the quality of the workmanship never looks particularly good.
Maybe it is supposed to look ‘rustic’ but everything that might look better
straight or level is rough and crooked and at a strange angle.
Meanwhile, a quarter of a mile away it has been a relatively slow week for Crossrail.
At the beginning of the week the story was that a 350 tonne crane would be at
work this weekend lifting heavy beams over the track to begin to form the floor
of the high level station; but it didn’t happen.
The scaffold and platform around the support columns are in place but maybe not yet quite finished.
The current set of photos show what has been going on, sometimes through the
ever dirtier Perspex flyover window and not helped by the week’s rain and mist.
On Wednesday the station was close to being inaccessible because of the blocked
drains which Bexley Council has neglected throughout the 29 years I have lived nearby.
Also on Wednesday, Network Rail were publicising the permanent closure of the
Felixtowe Road station entrance - the pictures are in the usual place. It is a mystery
to me why publicity for the closure of the northern entrance was by means of posters and leaflets by the southern entrance.
Maybe there was a repeat performance the following day on the more relevant side.
Click to see complete leaflet.
Finally, the Bostall Manorway footbridge has been opened, a mere six and a half months after installation.