Today saw Jerry, Rich D and Jak working on a stile near Helm Farm off Helm Lane.
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| Location of stile |
There was a jumble of boundaries consisting of several lines of old fencing, a broken down wall and a thick hedgerow. The first job was to clear the site and we opted to remove anything that wasn't useful so as to eventually leave a tidy site.
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| Existing stile |
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| Existing stile |
During the clearing, we found a number of interesting things. Firstly a "dead man", used by some stile builders in the past to secure the posts in the ground. Usually such posts are very hard to extract from the ground!
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| A "dead man" |
The archaeology continued! Rich found a piece of ironwork which could have been part of a gate.
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| Ironwork . . . modelled by Rich! |
We had a small amount of very welcome rain too but it did little to soften the dusty and extremely stony ground we were digging into.
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| Synchronised hole digging |
After some time we got one post in the ground and the next one ready for firming up.
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| Stile starting to take shape |
A short break and then we completed the stile and tidied up the site.
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| Rich performing the walk test |
Working for CROWS means we get to see beautiful countryside and extensive views . . . and sometimes animal life. Today we had two frogs who hopped in to say hello.
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| Rich's new friend |
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| Do frogs eat cake!? |
We're very grateful to Ian for giving us access to the site and also for his hospitality. Top notch!
This work was funded by donations to CROWS for which we are also very grateful. Many thanks.
