Released On 23rd Jan 2024
Volunteers celebrate walling accomplishment
Assistant Ranger Geoff Rowland and his excellent team of dry stone walling volunteers have now finished the wall repairs between Strouds West and Strouds East on Ham Hill.
A huge well done to the team! It has taken them 250 volunteer days (one person for one day = 1 volunteer day) to complete 100m of wall, which shows why a dedicated volunteer team was needed to carry out this work. Since Geoff started the drystone wall repair team, as a volunteer himself as ‘lockdown’ eased in the Spring of 2021, they have restored the 450m field wall dividing Strouds Meadow on the Ham Hill Plateau to being fully stockproof. This has involved 100m of complete rebuild, together with a 200m of partial rebuild: patching holes, increasing the height of low sections, replacing missing top stones etc.
The volunteers are now concentrating their efforts on the dry stone wall boundary in the top of Hedgecock Hill Woods.
Geoff is now leading a team of volunteers to open the exposed rock faces in the Geological SSSI so that visitors can view them more easily. The geological creation of Ham Hill is one of the themes that will be covered in the exhibition in the new Visitor Centre and once people understand the story, they will be able to go out on site and see the evidence to back it up.
