Dealing with water logged alley way

[fex10]

Hi! The alley behind our house is pretty waterlogged, very muddy to the point of unusable, cars can't get thru, even my 4x4 slips around! And then picks up so much mud in the tyres that then gets later flung off on the road..

It's all clay round here, near SW London. I was thinking of putting a few inches of hardcore down to raise the ground level and let the water flow on the clay/hardcore boundry. But now I'm thinking that won't the hardcore just clog up over the years? Maybe a soakaway ditch?

Some photos below. Funny the top part of the alley is fine. Then as you walk downhill it gets worse and worse. And the water seems to be just coming out the ground!
http://postimg.org/gallery/1javffc90/

When we had an inspection pit dug to do the garage foundation one of the walls of the pit just had water seeping out, while the opposite wall was stone dry, as though water was just flowing through the ground.

Thanks for the advice up front!

 

[scbk]

You really need to scrape out all the soft soggy topsoil first. (it looks like the bottom end has a bit of stone underneath in places.)

Then stone ontop, you'll need a fair bit. Ideally bigger stuff at the bottom. Depends what is available locally for a good price, rubble might be useful


A drain/pipe going from the front left to way up the back right somewhere might be useful as there looks to be water running across the existing track. Whilst you had the machinery there you could even give the track a wee scrape and dressing with new stone.


I guess the key is, who owns it and who's going to pay for it all?

 

[ree]

In pic 1. the ground on the right (RH) appears to be the "high" ground. Hence, water is moving down across the track.
If you have a close to the surface water table then you can only build up above ground level, & install cross drainage as advised above.