Bespoke concrete flint walls at Dover Retail Park

Bespoke concrete flint walls at Dover Retail Park

Milbank Concrete Products were chosen to design, manufacture and install over 90 specialist precast concrete flint embossed retaining walls at the St James Retail Leisure Park development in Dover.

The St James development transformed the retail and leisure offer in the heart of Dover and South Kent. The development comprises of 156,915 SqFt of new retail and leisure space.

Milbank produced 97 precast concrete walls, ranging from 6 to 11 tonnes, using 4 separate moulds. This allowed two separate moulds for flint laying whilst the other two moulds were poured over a 10 week casting period at Milbank’s precast concrete factory in Earls Colne.

The complex moulds were hand crafted by in-house carpenters to specific requirements agreed in regards to the flint layout. Each day, sand was used as a bed within the wooden moulds to assist with the placement and spacing of individual flint stones which were hand laid face down in the agreed style.

Milbank’s team hand sorted the stones to ensure they interlocked neatly and efficiently. Once this extremely time consuming process was complete, cages, lifters and pipes were located and the concrete carefully pourer over the top of the flints to form the wall structures. The following day, once the concrete curing was complete, excess sand was washed off and the units were turned using the in-house gantry crane to create the finished article.

The flint walls are now used to screen the service area for the main retail block from the roadside at the Dover St James development. The walls were manufactured and installed in individual units, with the joining sections hand-filled on site by the main contractor with matching flint stones. End columns and caps were also manufactured on site by the main contractor to provide finishing touches to the wall structure.

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