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Sunday 22 November 2015

More Happenings at Egginton

For a number of reasons the village of Egginton has been much in the news of late.
Firstly, villagers were upset when South Derbyshire Council erected a road sign spelling the village name with 3 "g's" as in Eggington.  Not since the Doomesday Book, when few people could read, even less could write, and the rest couldn't care less either way, has the name been spelled with more than two "g's".
See later.
Since Sustrans Route 54 passes through the village on it's way Southwards to Burton-upon-Trent and the City of Lichfield, we have a particular interest in the village, even though the off-road section of our beloved Mickleover Greenway ends at the village boundary.
Recent path restoration work by the Community Payback Teams has focused our attention on the area around Egginton Junction Bridge and here are some photographs of work carried out this weekend.

 View of the South Face of the bridge and the path almost back to it's original width.  Compare this with photo from the same spot on post of 10th November.


And looking at the North Face of the bridge, this being the area which is prone to flooding.

Also some mysterious civil engineering plans have appeared on the underside of the bridge. These are not graffiti, as they appear to have been done by a person of some intelligence, but exactly what they mean is a mystery to me.




                                             Anyone have any ideas?

The A5132 which passes over the bridge on it's way from Hilton to Willington, is quite a busy road, and the level crossing adjacent can be a dangerous place. It is to be closed to traffic overnight on 28th/29th November for minor road works and local rumour has it that the crossing is soon to be automated (the gates are manually operated at present) and the crossing moved 3m sideways with the approach road re-aligned to reduce it's current "S" bend shape.
The alternative of the crossing being replaced by a bridge is thought to be costed at over £1m.  So that won't happen, I fear.

Egginton
Checking the Doomesday Book, which amazingly is on the Internet, (although I think that it was not back in 1086), I find the spelling of Egginton is Eghintune, so only one "g" then.

1 comment:

Martin said...

Perhaps it is part of an investigation to remove the bridge and fill in the gap, so that cars can hit the level crossing even faster.