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Although the focus of our labours is the Longhall, there are plenty of other things going on. We’ve built two bridges, started on the gatehouse, made a set of gates and tried out various constructional techniques to plan the two hundred and twenty metres of palisade we’re now erecting. As the summer progressed, so it steadily increased in length, there being some eighty feet completed by the end of the year. We have completely changed the line of the entrance road into the site & over a particularly wet week in August 2007, excavated a new road, laid the bed and erected a massive pair of 4.1 metre gates.
Around the outside of the defended Burgh, we are steadily removing the Corsican Pine that was planted about twenty five years ago. We see these as big, woody weeds that need to be got rid of as soon as is practically possible - is a simple enough job for Chris Bell, Paul Assheton and a couple of others, but that is only the fun bit! Next, the tree is logged up into firewood-sized chunks and the branches burned on a fire that burns steadily from the moment we start work until we go home. But the real work is raking off and burning the layers of needle drop that cover the already poor soil with their acidic resin. It takes hours of steady toil and is backbreaking work performed by a small core team who have worked wonders in the four years that they’ve been clearing.
Originally open heathland, we intend to return at least some of our land to that state. The rest we shall farm as open woodland with stands of silver birch, oak and other native hardwoods, interspersed by crab apple and other appropriate fruit trees. Overall, it will be surrounded by a hawthorn and beech hedge that will run along our border with our neighbours, Wildwood.
We need a decent hedge, as the other side of the wire there is a small herd of hungry red deer, all too keen to eat anything at all that is vaguely green and turn our acre into the unremittingly brown and wrecked woodland that they inhabit.
The one thing that separates our site from all others is that it is for us an end in itself. We are re-enactors and it is close to all our hearts that we shall be able to dress in the costume of our ancestors and sit by the fire in a building they would have recognised. Not a tent in a field that will be empty tomorrow, but a structure that will far outlast those who build it - who knows what will become of this place that with very little care should last 150 years and with sensible maintenance may well see in the next millennium. A sobering thought ...
Nigel Amos stood down as Project Co-ordinator at the end of 2007 leaving behind him a very large pair of shoes! Liz Tice was a popular choice for the job & was duly appointed by our Witan in November. Her first job was to organise our first event of this kind which was held on Twelfth Night in 2008 when fifty of us gathered together to eat, drink and see out the end of Yule in a manner that those whose lives we seek to reconstruct would have found easy to understand. No film crews, no public - just us doing what we had long dreamed of doing. It was a most fulfilling and moving occasion, the first of many such events that we hope the Longhall will see.
It is also used for educational work and as the site becomes safer & easier of access, so this everyday use will grow.
We'd always intended that the site would be used as a location for filmwork and we've already hired it out for this purpose on several occasions. There are already a number of features available at the site and if you are a researcher looking for an appropriate location, I'd ask you to look at our dedicated "Filmwork" web pages where you will find more information about our permanent site.
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| Last updated
10 November, 2008
. Article by Kim Siddorn 2008. Click here to return to the societies main page or the listing. © Regia Anglorum 2008. If you have any comments or suggestions please feel free to e-mail us at webmaster@regia.org | |