Week Two at Markenfield Hall

Blogging out of sequence and without any pictorial evidence!  What will he think of next?

A second fine and well-attended day at Markenfield - Paul, Roger, Richard, Graham B, Barry G, Nick, Em II (and Boogie) and ... surprise, surprise ... Catriona.  Not sure what the doctors would say but she managed a full day without wilting and seems well on the way to a full recovery.  Welcome back, m'dear!

Said Catriona, Paul and I stripped out another stint (the one that gave way last week under Richard's mighty lean) and rebuilt it to path-side foundation level (4/5 courses on the ditch side).

Meanwhile, the rset of the crew pressed on with the first stretch and, despite challenging stone, completed it to within one course of what we laughingly refer to as copes (whatever big weighty stuff we can find lying around).  Copes here are about as common as throughs and we haven't identified a single one of those so far.

More next week (with photos).

Chris

Markenfield Hall - 19th October

This week saw the group kick off a new project at Markenfield Hall, this is an exciting time for us as we begin the restoration of a park pale. The pale at Markenfield is also a scheduled ancient monument so this a project that requires not only a high level of technical ability but also care and attention to the heritage value of the walls structure and location.
We started by assessing the wall and trying to determine its original path and dimensions.

The pale has a ditch on the inside face which originally would mean the height that side was enough to keep the deer in the park.

Investigations in the rubble indicated that the foundations were not as broad as feared and we determined they should be 3' wide by ground level. We cleared away all the stones and replaced some of the foundations where they were missing. Once we had established a level to work from we built the wall up to ground level (on the outside wall).

The pale has a challenging mix of stone, some sandstone which we have deduced is part of the original wall and field cobbles which seem to have been used to patch up the wall over time. We felt the outside face of the wall is the most visible side of the wall (especially when the vegetation regrows on the inside face) so elected to use as much original stone here as possible.

We made good progress with a good turnout in lovely weather (long may it last) and by 3pm had reached ground level.

Thanks to Richard, Chris, Phillip, Roger, Graham B, Graham D, Barry and Nick for your hard work this week.

Em

Final week at Banks Farm - 12th October

What a day! We had another good turnout this week, two long lost wallers returned to the fold and Nick came back to join us again so we must have been on our best behaviour last week if he wasn't put off.

We had hoped to get the wall completed this week as we are starting a new project next week, the good news is that we did, the bad news is we might have to adjust some of the copes when we next return. Still for now it is stable and protected from the elements and with a bit of luck it'll be cow proof as well.

We spent the day in constant drizzle so we haven't got the best photos to show but they'll have to do.

Next week onto green fields and pastures new, huge thanks to Graham B, Robert, Barry G, Em 2, Phillip and Nick for a sterling effort.

Em

Ps got my new (2nd hand) iPhone today so photos will follow shortly.

Walling at Banks Farm - 5th October

Well so ends another weeks walling at Banks Farm, the weather held off til the last minute and despite the interest from the cows currently residing in the fields we got a good days work in.

Cows!

We were joined by faces old and new this week, welcome back to Barry G and hello to Nick who has slogged over from the west to help us along our way.

We split into pairs and carried on building up the wall at the far end and took down the rest of the stint to foundation level. We set Nick (as an experienced waller) the task of working on the cheekend and the rest of us tried to find some room and work on raising up a substantial height of wall before the end of the day.

Clearing foundations

Foundations going in

The session was fraught with strong winds, bovine interest, cow pat encrusted canines (thanks Boogie) and injury. (I managed to bash two fingers and get grit in my eye, which after a trip to the minor injuries unit at Ripon turned out to be a minor laceration - ouch).

Well that'll be all from me for now, my medicinal red wine is starting to take effect and my typing is wandering, I'm also a little freaked out by the florescent eye dye coming out of my nose!

Thanks to Chris, Em2, Richard (the younger), Graham D, Nick, Barry G, Martin and Phillip for all your hard work today.

Em

Walling at Banks Farm 28th September

Another week in West End and we were treated to beautiful clear skies and scorching sunshine.  A slow start for me today and I kicked off with a coffee to get the parts of me into gear that needed to be in gear!

Refreshing the parts that other drinks can't reach

Once the coffee had worked it's magic we set about building the gap up that we started a couple of weeks ago.  The stone is still proving a challenge but we battled on and managed to get a good few courses on before we lost a couple of folks at lunch time.  We even broke out the lines to try and get a nice horizontal course in place.

Next week we'll be returning to West End, hopefuly we'll see more of the lovely weather.

Thanks to Roger, Paul and Phillip for a hard days slog under the sun.

Em