Digging into the past at Hare Hill

September 13, 2015 by Julian

For today’s activity on a sunny September day, the focus was less on ecology and habitats and more on heritage conservation. Hare Hill has an extensive system of culverts (on which we’ve worked many times in the past), but today we were working on a structure which might have been part of a sheep dip, dating perhaps to the first half of the nineteenth century. A lot of the construction was overgrown or buried under soil and turf – so we were doing what we could to clear and reveal the original stonework and, where part of the structure had collapsed, try to identify its original line and formation. This led to a lot of interesting archaeological and architectural theorizing (“Are these buried stones part of a collapsed wall? Would there have been steps? Is this rusted length of metal part of a rail? Could there have been a sloped descent to the water at this point rather than a wall?”)! We don’t know that we came up with any of the right answers but the speculation was entertaining!

The National Trust is arranging for the revealed stonework to be assessed by someone with more expertise and it might follow in due course that there is a plan for more exploration and restoration of the structures here – so we’ll keep an eye out for future developments!