Four giant mild steel weir gates each one weighing as much as an African elephant - were delivered to the Sunbury yard Wednesday 10 October 2007 en route to their new home in Shepperton Weir B.

The gates are 3.5m wide and 3.6m high and built by specialist contractor L G Kimber at Brill near Aylesbury. They took more than a year to complete and are so huge that they had to be galvanised at a specialist site in Essex who had dipping baths big enough to accommodate these massive structures.

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The four ton gates' journey to Sunbury was by wideload lorry under a police escort, but their travel to site took place by pontoon towed up the river to the new Shepperton Weir B site. The new weir gates are built to last for 60 years, and the Shepperton Weir B was reconstructed in its current form in 1925.

In the last decade, only three sets of gates were replaced in England and Wales.

Alec Vincent, the site agent at Shepperton said: "This type of operation is not something you see every day. It’s taken a team effort and good communication to manoeuvre the gates from their birthplace to their new home here at Shepperton."

(JM)