The Friends of Butser Ancient Farm - Winter Newsletter 2023
AGM
The Annual General Meeting of the Friends of Butser Ancient Farm, was held on 23 October 2023 at Stoud Village Hall. It was attending by 16 people in-person and 10 people on-line, via Zoom. With the inclement weather, the hybrid approach certainly helped people to join who might otherwise have had difficulty doing so.
The standing stone, raised on 27 July, during the Festival or Archaeology, with the kind help of the crew of the Royal Navy’s aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth. © www.butserancientfarm.co.uk
There was a great farm update from Thérèse, the Experimental Archaeologist at Butser, which was supported with visual materials that really brought to life the changes at the Farm this year – especially the new Anglo-Saxon Hall and the raising of a standing stone! Butser has continued to experiment with techniques and construct new buildings, which complement the existing estate and adds to the educational repertoire of the site.
Two students, Megan Russell and Sarah Sherwood, whose studies have been supported by the Friends Bursaries, also gave an update on their research. The topics covered – ‘Craeft’ work as a route to better mental health and the use of different roofing materials – were both novel and interesting. As their research comes to completion, we’ll try to give the Friends members a further update.
Amongst all the good news and new developments, however, there was a little sad news: Dave Butcher, our Chairman and Kit Mitchell, our Minutes Secretary decided to retire and did not stand again for election to the committee. Their years of experience and knowledge is a great loss to the Friends, as each of them have steered the charity through a great deal of change and, over Covid, some very difficult circumstances. Their involvement will be missed by the Committee but they will continue as extremely valued members of the Friends.
As a result of Dave and Kit’s departure, a number of new committee members were appointed: Eira Morgan-Harrisskitt, Christopher Hellyar, Victoria Ruzewicz and Jacqueline Petts have kindly volunteered to join the committee. Their participation will help the Friends continue its support of Butser, well into the future. Steve Cummins has taken over the role as Chair of the Friends, with Hilary Foley as Deputy Chair and Dee Marwaha as Treasurer.
Thérèse Kearns, the Bursary students and Committee members, at the 2022 Friends AGM.
Volunteer evening
On the 7 December 2022, the Farm’s Directors kindly invited its volunteers to an evening event, to celebrate the hard work and contribution made by the whole team during the year. Held in the Little Woodbury roundhouse, there was plenty of hot stew, bread rolls, mulled wine and good cheer!
At the event, the new Friends Chair, Steve, gave Maureen and Simon, the Butser Directors, a cheque for £9,315 to help the farm refurbish and improve buildings on the site.
© www.butserancientfarm.co.uk
This money will be used on two key projects in 2023. Firstly, to resurface the floor of the Little Woodbury, which has become very uneven and potentially hazardous. By doing this work, the Farm hopes to make the largest roundhouse more accessible and use it for many more events. The second area of building improvement, is the completion of the new metal working area, so it’s ready for visitors in Spring 2023. This “hot technology” area will be a valuable resource to demonstrate metal technologies to the public and to help the Farm work more closely with universities, in a safe and dry environment.
Both Maureen and Simon were extremely grateful to you, the Friends, for the generous contribution that you’ve made to help improve the Farm’s buildings.
The current state of the Little Woodbury floor, somewhat in disrepair
Shingle making
The new “hot technology” area includes a building that needed to be roofed. This work has been very much been done by volunteers, Friends and Butser Staff. The material used is shingles, which are tiles made from wood, and it’s a technique that’s as old as the hills. It was common practice in Anglo-Saxon England: When building the first churches (in the 7th century), which were wholly timber framed, the church roofs would invariably have been wood-tiled.
© www.butserancientfarm.co.uk
Wood shingles are surprisingly durable, lasting some 30 to 40 years, which compares favourably with modern clay tiles, which commonly last 70 years. The steeper the roof, the longer they last, as the rain runs off faster, having less time to rest on the wood and, ultimately, to rot it.
At Butser they are made in the traditional way, not dissimilar to how they would have been made in the “dark ages”. The Carpenter’s hut at Butser was roofed 7 years ago and is still in fine fettle, keeping one perfectly dry on a rainy day!
To make a shingle, one starts, of course, with a log from a tree. The best logs are straight-grained, so less work is required and the shingles are as flat as possible. The log is split using a froe (an L-shaped tool with a wooden handle and a horizontal blade) and a hammer; first into halves, then into quarters and so on, much like a chocolate orange.
How to use a short axe correctly, as demonstrated by our previous Chairman, Dave Butcher.
The resulting “wedges” need to have the outer edge removed. This removes the bark and the sapwood (which is used by the tree to transport water and sugars). If the sapwood were used in the final shingle, it would be prone to rotting and insect attack. With the resulting thin wedge of wood, the shaping begins.
Using a small “side-axe” the long edges of the wedge are straightened. One holds the axe close to the blade, rather than at the base of the axe, so the cuts are more accurate. As the downstroke cuts the wood, it naturally follows the grain and the wood often splits in a straight line, naturally.
One then needs to deal with the surface of the shingle, which is always irregular when split from the trunk. The shingle is planed on a shaving horse with a drawknife on the underside, to give it a smooth surface. This allows the shingle to rest on the rest of the roof, perfectly flat.
© www.historicipswich.org
The final step is to bevel the lower edge of the shingle, which faces out into the elements, to allow rainwater to run off smoothly.
The shingles are attached to the roof on a purlin (shown in the diagram) using nails and are “layered” so that, at any point, the roof is at least three shingles “deep”. This protects the lowest shingle from the elements and minimises any risk of water ingress into the building.
Each shingle takes between 30 mins and 45 minutes to make, depending on how much shaping is required. The roof of the new Hot Technology hut requires 3,000 shingles(!), so there is still some work to be done, to get the roof finished by Spring!
FARM UPDATE
DANEBURY ROUNDHOUSE
The build of the new round house (Danebury CS20), opposite the Little Woodbury, is well under way. This is an experimental rebuild of a structure from Danebury Hillfort, but its archaeology has some quirks which has made interpretation and structural planning, difficult.
The archaeological plan of CS20 – the uprights (zales) can clearly be seen around the inside edge, as dark ‘dots’
The building work started using a ring of 114 upright studs (also called zales), and layering in split hazel to create the wattle walls, to a height of 1.4m. But the building is 8m in diameter, which is quite large. As such, the roof will weigh several tonnes. The wattle walls, in themselves, wouldn’t be able to support such a heavy roof.
Looking back at the archaeology there are two large post-holes at the back (top of the picture) and what appear to be more elsewhere, but the archaeology is fragmentary and not conclusive. These were initially interpreted as having an “industrial” function (i.e., related to how the building was being used).
On review, there may have been an “inner ring” of structural post holes, which is more similar to the other roundhouses at Butser. It’s possible, in cases where the posts weren’t driven deep enough into the ground, that these posts just don’t appear in the archaeology.
As such, the building now has 10 inner post holes added, but each one is set only 2 feet into the ground; with lintels to hold the weight of the rafters. After all, that’s what experimental archaeology is all about - proving what can be done, but also what can't.
Since autumn, rafters have been added; with some of the rafters much longer than the others, so that they touch the floor (see below). That’s repeated in three other places to form an X of rafters, supported by the ground. This will help take some of the weight off the posts when the thatch is laid, in the new year.
Danebury round house, in autumn 2022.
The Danebury, as at 18 November 2022, nearly ready for the thatch to be laid.
DUNCH HILL ROUNDHOUSE
The bronze age roundhouse, which was excavated at Dunch Hill and rebuilt in 2021, at Butser, by Project Nightingale volunteers needed a little work recently.
On reviewing the structure, one year on from its build, it became apparent that the thatch is too thick – because it stops the smoke from percolating out and makes the roundhouse smoky and uncomfortable to use on a day-to-day basis.
The Bronze Age roundhouse, in the process of being re-thatched
The thatch had been laid with the same thickness from the bottom of the roof, right to the top, at a thickness of between 2 and 3 feet. As with any experimental re-build, we don’t know exactly how the roofs were constructed, as they don’t survive in the archaeology. So, the thatch has now been re-laid so it’s thicker at the base and thinner close to the roof’s apex. In the process almost half the thatch has been removed.
When it was built, a variety of different “wall types” were used, from turf walls to clunch. Each has performed very differently in the intervening year. Clunch, which is crushed limestone, straw and water, that dries to an almost concrete like hardness, hasn’t exhibited any cracking and remains very solid, if a little cold. It was, however, the most time-consuming wall to construct. The wall that used two panels of wattle, with a 20 cm gap in between, stuffed with sheep’s wool, is by far the best at insulating – there’s no air seeping into the building from that wall at all. But, whilst the wall remains solid with no cracks appearing, it has succumbed to rodent attack, with a mouse having burrowed right through in one corner! The turf backed wattle wall, has performed surprisingly well – the turf has settled in and has become quite solid but there are some small cracks in the daub, so a wall like that may have needed re-daubing annually (as part of a pre-historic spring clean!). Whether this tuft backed wattle wall rots any faster than normal wattle and daub construction, we’ll find out in the coming years!
The Bronze Age roundhouse, as at 21 December, fully re-thatched.
WINTER SOLSTICE
Following the erection of the megalith for the 50th anniversary, a second stone has been installed, ready for the 21 December 2022, by the hurdle fence. If you stand with your back to the megalith (the larger stone) and look towards the new, smaller, stone, you’ll be looking directly at where the sun rises on the winter solstice.
The word ‘solstice’ is made up of two parts: ‘sol’ – meaning Sun and ‘sisto’ meaning stand still, both from Latin. Whilst we all know that this is the shortest day of the year, the meaning to our prehistoric ancestors was more significant. As each day passes, the position in the sky where the sun reaches its highest point (solar noon), changes. As the winter solstice approaches, the southward progress of that position, stops – and the sun’s highest point stays in that same position for a couple of days. Thereafter, the sun’s position, at solar noon, moves slowly northwards.
Sunrise on the 21st December, 2022.
The neolithic people who raised standing stones, were farmers. Winter was a fearful time, as temperatures dropped, food was sparse and the days were dark. They would have longed for the return of light and warmth. They marked the winter solstice as a turning point – with the promise that longer days, more light, greater warmth and growth, would eventually return.
In the afternoon of this year’s winter solstice, the Farm marked the day with Anglo Saxon and Celtic tales in the Little Woodbury, expertly told by Jonathan Huet.
