The Beacon has been given permission to reproduce a letter from Cadw explaining the recent works to the town's ancient gatehouse. The work continued for a 15 week period after initial damage to the building caused by a foreign vehicle.

Mr Simmonds and Mr Rowlands,

Both of you have raised concerns with Cadw about the recent works undertaken at Monnow Bridge by Monmouthshire County Council. I have been involved with the project on Cadw's behalf. The works arose from an inspection report undertaken by Capita Symonds, engineers, for the council in February 2007.

This identified a complex of problems, particularly associated with the gatehouse. Some of these were quite serious, including cracking and the separation of straight joints. Others reflect a lack of maintenance including broken roof slates, rusted and blocked rainwater goods, open or failed joints in the masonry and some timber decay. The recent work was a first phase dealing with the issues at a high level. The repairs to the roof slating and the repointing of the masonry has in my opinion been carried out to a good standard. All patch repointing will stand out when first applied. There are a wide variety of mortar and cement pointings visible on the exterior of the gatehouse and the contractor prepared a number of samples, trying to match what we believed to be the original or earliest present. Over time, the surface lime will wash away and the colour will match.

The gatehouse was never intended to have rainwater goods. However, in modern times it is considered unacceptable to have water emptying onto the pedestrians below or washing down the stone faces of the building itself. A condition of the scheduled monument consent was that the repair and replacement of the rainwater goods would be agreed between the applicant and Cadw once scaffolding was in place. On inspection it was found that the two cast-iron down pipes were badly corroded and were blocked solid with moss that had washed down from the roof. As a result the guttering had no outfall and the timber fascia boards had rotted. Water was spilling over onto the walls. However the guttering, which was in galvanized steel and put up in the 1980s was salvageable and re-usuable and has been put back onto a new Douglas Fir fascia board, which will silver down with age and last a lot longer than painted softwood.

In reviewing the options for downpipes, we considered lead (too expensive), cast-iron (only available in a similar form that had failed), glass-reinforced plastic (totally inappropriate) and zinc. We selected zinc as it was available in a rectangular section which would fit flat against the wall and would be wide enough in section so as not to block. Over time zinc will patinate to look increasingly like lead. In the time and budget made available by Monmouthshire CC, it was only possible to source one form of zinc downpipe, which was a modern fabricated section. I approved a sample of this pipe. However when I was invited to inspect the fitted downpipes, it was only two days before the scaffold had to be removed to allow for the Rolls car parade to pass over the bridge. The brackets provided by the fabricator were highly inappropriate as they held the downpipe well away from the wall. In the time available, the project manager, Andy Hallum, had at my suggestion some lead brackets made at very short notice and these are now what are fitted on the south elevation, while the fabricator's brackets remain on the north side.

The resulting situation is I accept not the best, though it is considerably better than what was there before and had failed. The zinc will patinate in time and all the colours of fascia, guttering, downpipes and brackets will become much the same. What has been used will not corrode and will not require maintenance. It is also far easier to unblock.

Monmouthshire CC is proposing a second phase of work. This will concentrate on lower levels of the masonry and in particular some serious areas of cracking. It will also look to make the interior much safer and easier to access so it can be opened more frequently and be interpreted to visitors to the town.

I would be happy to receive any further comments you may have on what has been done and what is proposed, though please remember that Monmouthshire County Council is the promoter of this work.

Rick Turner

(Inspector of Ancient Monuments,

Cadw Inspectorate,

Welsh Assembly Government)