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My early attempt at flint work with cob hat!
I really enjoyed laying these flat
flints to make a cobble path
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My love affair with Earth - 25th August 2019
I’ve just cycled home from EddyFest.
My body is full of
great music and a pint of Marmalade cyder (I kid you not).
The farmers are making the most of
this bank holiday
heatwave to get the last of their harvest in. This afternoon I’ve cycled through dust
clouds, nearly been blown into a hedge by a monster tractor and spotted more hidden history.
I enjoy cycling. It gets me close up
and personal with our
built heritage …. flint and earth walls to be precise. Suffolk is full
of
gorgeous lowly walls. ( I could take you on a guided tour of these
reconfigured
local aggregates - all you have to do is ask.) Their varied form strikes a cord in me like a soft
Spanish
guitar. People ask me when it began – my long love affair with
vernacular
building. I have to say it crept up on me, subtly like old age is
beginning to!
I cast my mind back 12 years to my
first experience of a free-form
earth wall. I’d been chopping back the veteran Ivy and rampant Bramble that obscured a short
flint
and brick wall when I came across a quantity of what I perceived to be
an earth
castle precariously holding onto the top of the wall. Closer
examination revealed
that it was a fragment of an earth wall. That, if I’m honest was the
beginning
of much digging, stomping and building with earth. It is such a
satisfying
activity, and it keeps me fit and full of beans.
Earlier, as I cycled through the
heat haze and the straw
strewn lanes, I wondered about the people who built the walls that I so
adore. They
are so full of craftsmanship that I yearn to emulate. Each one tells
the story
of the person who built it, their style shines through, as do the earty and honest building
materials
they had to hand. I have much to learn from them.
Now that’s something to raise a
glass more Marmalade cyder
to! Talent obscured by Ivy and Brambles.
The old flint wall with a
layer of cob on top
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