Highways Agency

The Projects

To make best use of road closures and rescources, two schemes were carried out at the same time at the end of summer 2007 and was completed on 3 November 2007.

We carried out work to stabilise the embankment on the A46 at Taylors Wood, 1km to the west of Stratford upon Avon.

We also resurfaced nearly 2km of the A46, a further 1¾ km to the west of Taylors Wood, between The Stag public house and the Temple Grafton/Haselor turning.

Why was the work necessary?

At Taylors Wood, 1km west of Shottery Island, the road is built along the side of a hill.  The embankment to the south of the road  started to be unstable and tension cracks had appeared in the road surface.  To stop further cracks, we strengthened the embankment and then resurfaced the road.

Slightly further west along the A46, between The Stag public house and the Temple Grafton/Haselor turning, the road surface had come to the end of its life.  New kerbs were laid at certain key areas and the whole road resurfaced.

What work was done?

To stabilise the Taylors Wood embankment, gabion baskets were installed at the bottom of the slope.  These are large wire mesh boxes, which are put into place, filled with large stones and have their lids wired down.  Once the gabions were in place the embankment was built up to road level and drainage installed to make sure the new embankment cannot be affected by water running of the road.

When the stabilisation works was completed new kerbs were put in, the road was resurfaced and also completely reconstructed (360mm deep) in the cracked areas.  There was also some new safety fencing installed.

The Temple Gratfon to Redhill resurfacing scheme covered the road in both directions as well as the climbing lane near to The Stag public house.  Most of this was relatively straightforward scheme where 110mm was removed from the surfacing and replaced with new material. 

There is, however, a section of the road where deeper layers had failed.  This meant that 300mm needed to be removed and replaced.  There was not enough time during an overnight road closure for 300mm of material to cool enough for traffic to run on it the following morning.  Because of this, the road needed to be closed for a full weekend.