Refurbishment of Castle Square Car Park retaining wall in Ludlow nears completion

Major work to refurbish a 60-metre length of the Ludlow Town Wall, which retains part of the Castle Square Car Park in Ludlow town centre, is progressing well, and part of the site area will be returned to public parking this week.  This means that from Wednesday (7 November) there should be at least 16 more parking places available in the car park. 

Although the majority of the car park level work is now complete, it is estimated that there remains another three weeks’ work to be carried out to the Linney side of the wall.  It is therefore estimated that the rest of the site area will become available for public parking on Friday 23 November 2012. 

The refurbishment work has included stabilising the wall by installing stainless steel anchors to tie it to the bed rock that lies at a depth of approximately five metres beneath the car park, taking down and rebuilding the wall’s parapet, and repointing the whole wall. In addition, the area behind the wall is being altered to include a motorcycle parking area and a raised viewing platform.  The latter will include an information lectern to help people identify the landscape features visible from the wall. 

The information lectern will include an extract from a poem submitted by a local resident. This was chosen from 12 poems which were received by the council in response to adverts made via the local media.  The successful extract reads ‘blue remembered hills’. 

At present it is too early to be able to confirm the actual cost of the work; however, it is estimated that it will be in the region of £465,000. 

Because of the wall’s status as a scheduled ancient monument, the scheme has been carried out in close liaison with English Heritage. 

Simon Jones, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member responsible for this work, said:

“This was essential work which was needed to ensure that this important ancient monument can continue to safely support the car park in the long term.  It has involved a combination of modern and traditional technologies.  I am pleased that it has been possible to carry it out with relatively minimal impact to the public use of the car park.” 

Rosanna Taylor-Smith, Shropshire Councillor for Ludlow North, said:

“The works  are almost finished now and looking really good and the when the information lectern is installed, this will encourage people to look at the fantastic views from Ludlow’s Town Walls. The poem, written by Grace Stone is a great addition to the information given to explain the scenery.”

The refurbishment work has been carried out by Alun Griffiths (Contractors) Ltd, who were supervised by Shropshire Council’s term contract consultant, Mouchel. 

Although the work was originally programmed to be complete at the beginning of October 2012, unfortunately this was not possible because of the need to address a number of small unforeseen problems which were only discovered as more and more of the fabric of the old wall was exposed when carrying out the work.