# French rock used for flood repair (BBC News)



## SN NewsCaster (Mar 5, 2007)

Thousands of tonnes of French rock is being shipped in to Suffolk for emergency flood defence repair work.

More from BBC News...


----------



## AncientBrit (Oct 6, 2007)

Now there is good old Government planning at work. For thousands of years the sea has been eroding the coasts of Britain and now that its finally gone, they rush off to buy French rocks and employ all those French rock quarry workers. Supreme Jobworthiness!


----------



## fred henderson (Jun 13, 2005)

It has been going on in East Anglia for some time Bob. Norwich Cathedral is built of stone shipped from France. The Cathedral has a model of the special vessel used to transport the stone blocks.

Fred (Thumb)


----------



## Nick Balls (Apr 5, 2008)

Yep over 900 years ago! From Caen in France ........ We have a few more recent imported rocks(Sea defences) round here too.....larvik Quarry in Norway circ 1990',s 
Old Canute tried telling the sea to go back but no luck so far! Still trying


----------



## AncientBrit (Oct 6, 2007)

Silly me. I guess they will be using Eastern Euro labour to put the rocks in place.(Jester) 
Canute should have asked the Dutch, They seem to have been sucessful, I suppose they didnt use French rock either.


----------



## pensioner (Apr 29, 2009)

If you want a good example of this type of flood defence take a walk along to Felixstowe where they finished a couple of years ago, with French Rock and Thames Estuary sea bed, you probably wouldn't know they had even started. But then they have to do something to waste £10,000,000 minus a brown envelope or two.(Cloud) (Jester) (Cloud) 
rgds


----------



## Ron Stringer (Mar 15, 2005)

Nick Balls said:


> Yep over 900 years ago! From Caen in France ........


According to David Dimblebey's recent TV programme on British History, the stone from Caen was the preferred stone of the Normans (particularly William I) for major buildings such as Cathedrals. Apparently William liked the white appearance and easy carving properties. The White Tower in the Tower of London was one of the examples shown.


----------



## Billieboy (May 18, 2009)

AncientBrit said:


> Canute should have asked the Dutch, They seem to have been sucessful, I suppose they didnt use French rock either.


The stones used for dijk building are of various sizes and shapes, the foundation stones are any rough cut granite to required size, from Scotland and France. The facing stones for wave and splash areas, are hexagonal Basalt from Ireland and west Scotland, these are trimmed to size and hand fitted. Other heavy breakwater stones are made from precast concrete of various shapes. The shapes are determines by the wave, wind, current patterns found in pre-construction model trials. Years of study go into new dijk construction programmes, some even involving design and construction of special floating equipment, for handling willow mats, stones, aggregate, clay and sand. Googling, "Neeltjes-Jan", without quotation marks, will bring up some interesting facts and general information, in various languages.


----------

