As part of the small jobs day initiative, Jan and Jerry were summarily dispatched by Paul to a broken stile above the lovely Great House Farm, Cragg Vale, with fine views on a beautiful day across Broadhead Clough over to Bell House.
This stile was reported to need new treads and support posts but this was a bit of a blind visit as it was not exactly clear how much repair was required.
We had a slow start as we found ourselves at an adjacent property with no way of getting across without having to backtrack down the hill and driving back up again. We then set off to the stile location with as many tools and and as much material we could carry, but took a wrong turn, and ended up at the wrong stile. Again we had to backtrack. Perhaps we need a navigation skills refresher course from CROWS?
The very helpful resident at Great House gave us the rundown on the problems with the stile, even previously patching it up himself and came to check on progress a couple of the times during the day with the promise of biscuits and a brew, if the need arose.
When we got there, we realised that the stile was almost unusable in its current state as the support posts and treads were rotten, wobbly and very slippery. Users had resorted to remove some of the side rails bracing the stile against the adjacent stock fence post so that they could by-pass the stile and step over the lower rails. To do this, the stock fence post had become a de-facto grab post and was very loose.
The entire contraption was weirdly constructed, certainly not conforming to any standard, never mind a British one! One strange feature was the lack of a post below the lower tread, which was supported by a cross rail instead.
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| Bottom view of the wonky stile with rotten posts and treads and side rails missing. |
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| A beautiful location for a day's work. |
Luckily we had brought extra materials just in case and were able to replace both of the top support posts. We were able to clean up and re-use one tread board. We decided to replace the cross rail support with a proper leg until we started excavating and slowly realised why the tread was supported by a rail in the first place! Exactly where the support post should be was a massive rock that was impossible to deal with so, instead, we backtracked again and installed a new support rail. We stabilised the stock fence post by re-fixing the rails to the stile but the central grab post does seem to need some further attention at a future date.
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| New posts, treads and rails fitted, just before the sun went down... |
This work was funded by kind donations to CROWS.
