The building
211 metres under one roof
The longest covered ropewalk on the river, built in 1874 from the tannery shed and two brick ends.
The walk is a simple idea built to a demanding size: a straight covered passage, exactly the length of the longest rope the yard lays in one piece, with a spinning frame at one end and a closing plate at the other. The Brant walk runs 211 metres end to end, which is why no rope leaves the yard longer than 190 metres in one piece. The last twenty are the closing margin and the safety of the men on the former.
The brick ends carry the dates. The north end says 1874, the founding. The south end says 1936, the year the fire took the drying racks and the yard rebuilt inside a single autumn. Between them, the timber roof has held tar smoke, hemp dust and a hundred years of radio, because the spinners have kept a wireless on the forming top since 1946.
Visitors walk it on tours on Tuesdays and Saturdays. The full pass, out and back, takes about half an hour at the walk-boys’ pace, and you will understand rope by the end of it better than any diagram teaches.
- Length
- 211 metres, covered, listed 2004
- Built
- 1874, from a tannery shed and two brick ends
- Jack
- Hook frame of 1919, hand-turned, three spinners
- Walks
- Morning, noon and tide, six days a week
- Wireless
- On since 1946, permanently tuned to the harbour report
- Longest single piece
- 190 metres, laid for the dredger Brant Maid in 1979