The Gillcambon upgrade project. (Pronounced Gill-co-mon).
The current Gillcambon footbridge was constructed by local craftsmen, in the 1940's. 

It replaced the original timber footbridge which was situated slightly downstream.

It's construction is based from the steel chassis of a horse drawn timber wagon, previously used by the sawmill.
The Beck and road run in parallel format for a length of more than 100mtrs, with only a narrow footprint divider bank/bund between them.
The divider bank/bund was privately funded and constructed in 2002 to prevent the beck from just flowing onto the road in a torrent, in turn flowing onto the Caravan Park.

The road still fills with flood water to the same level as the beck, due to the negative back-flow through the road drains, "BUT without the unmanageable current".
The photo above, (taken just before the hours of darkness on the 5th of December 2015) will probably live-on in some of the villagers memories, as this was probably the only potential mass flood water source that they actually witnessed before the daylight faded.  

BUT, during the very same moments, at the other end of the village, the 120 year old low capacity bridge was becoming seriously overwhelmed, leading to multiple stacking of the river Caldew, eventually overtopping the village defence bank in huge volume during the crescendo of storm Desmond during the hours of darkness, which lagooned MILLHOUSE  in the very short time of 15 minutes, to penetrate and devastate 6 homes.
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In January 2017, contractors successfully and efficiently completed a sizable civil engineering upgrade to the Gillcambon Corner.
As it was, before the work commenced.


Inevitable erosion occured around the back of tree trunks to compensate for their displacement,  each time the beck rose to an extreme level.
Bags of raw cement were placed along a section several years ago, which proved to be amazingly successful, preventing further erosion to the inner radius of the bank during the beck's extremities, for many, many years. 
As it was, before work commenced.
Work commenced on the morning of 12th January 2017.
Contractors successfully and efficiently completed the upgrade work to the Gillcambon Corner, including dredging and widening of the flow capacity aperture.

And it only took 5 working days.

SADLY, it is very IMPORTANT to note, the realistic fact does remain after all this extensive work and expense.

The road will still flood to the same level as the beck,
(as before the work was carried out, as shown here).

"IT STILL DOES, AND ALWAYS WILL"
The age-old primary phenomenon of :-

"negative back-flow"

realistically does  still occur up the two road gullies just as before.
The sooner the original overflow path for the river Caldew bridge is reinstated, the sooner the properties in MILLHOUSE will actually become desirable and marketable, (as they used to be).
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