The Hemington Timbers are part of a series of bridges which spanned the River Trent at Hemington in Leicestershire. The bridges existed between 1097 and 1270 and were part of the important route called The King's Highway which led from Leicester and the south to Derby and the north.
Each bridge was ultimately damaged (probably by floods) and eventually a ferry was used to cross the river. Some of the timbers are almost 7 metres long and half a metre square. The timbers were made into boxes (or caissons) which were dropped into the river and filled with stones forming the piers of the bridge. Then upright pieces were used to support a roadway across the river.
The Timbers were found during gravel extraction works in 1993 and collected for preservation. The method chosen to preserve them was Sugar Replacement which involved putting the waterlogged timbers into tanks of liquid sugar until the sugar replaced the water inside the timbers. British Sugar has generously provided over seventy tonnes of liquid sugar to Leicestershire County Council to undertake this innovative process over the past seventeen years. It means that the timbers will not warp or split when they are dried out. The drying is now complete.
