Swan Barn Farm is a National Trust Property right next to the small town of Haslemere. Being right on the town’s doorstep it offers a real opportunity for people to get involved in the countryside. It is made up of about 100 acres of ancient woodland and meadows as well as a small orchard and a number of ponds and streams. It is home to the Black Down Wardening team as well as to Hunter Basecamp.
The basecamp, pictured above, offers accomodation to volunteers who come for week long working holidays and work on a number of NT properties in the area. It is also the site for an exciting new project.
This project aims to extend the basecamp facilities by building new accomodation for long term volunteers. We want to demolish the shed you can see to the left of the basecamp and put a new building in its place.
From their base at Swan Barn Farm the Black Down Countryside team manage hundreds of acres of woodland, heathland and meadows. This countryside and its important wildlife is much loved by local people. We wanted the new building to reflect this landscape and to be constructed from materials sourced on the estate in an environmentally friendly manner.
The woodlands on the estate are managed primarily for public access and nature conservation. Large areas of them are traditional coppiced woodlands. The cyclical cutting of coppiced woodland provides ideal conditions for a wide range of woodland wildlife as well as providing timber for use on the estate.
We take our use of wood very seriously and have always tried to ensure that we are as self sufficient and environmentaly friendly as possible in its use, here you can see the wardens producing fencing materials in one of the coppices.
We have been working with local designer and woodsman Ben Law, you may have seen him building his house (shown below) on the Channel 4 programme Grand Designs. Ben has helped us to design an environmentaly friendly, locally sourced building which we can construct with the help of our volunteers.
The building will be constructed around a roundwood timber frame. This construction technique produces attractive, functional buildings that can be sourced from the local woods. Exterior walls will be made of straw bales which will then either be rendered with lime or protected with oak boards. Interior walls will be wattle and daub with earth plaster. The roof will be made of chestnut shingles.
Its going to be a fascinating process, one which people are already wanting either to get involved with or to find out more about.
This blog site will aim to tell the unfolding story of the project.
Wish us luck !
Your blog notice came as a surprise to me.
I had heard the project was delayed but thought I was still attending in late Sept. to work.
Please may I have my £100 back, paid on 4th Jan this year.
Rob Stephenson.
Hi Rob, as per email conversation rest assured the September/October holidays are going ahead. Dave will post on what activities are planned to get the site ready for next year.
Hi Dave, Matt and Spike
Just home from the fab week at Swan Barn. Can’t find the RSS Feed button on your blog – is there one there and I can’t find it? or is there some other feindishly difficult way of following the blog progress.
Thanks everso
Anne
Hi Anne
Glad you enjoyed your week here, thanks very much for your help. Have just added an email subscription button at the bottom of the home page, hope this is helpfull.
Cheers
Dave
Hi Dave and all,
Don’t forget we at the volunteer centre can help you find volunteers for your projects – just email me the schedule and we’ll do our best to promote it.. Bestest wishes and good blogging!
narn (Robyn’s mate Robin’s mum!)
Thanks Narn, we usually run volunteer days here every wednesday, one of the main tasks at the moment is making the shingles for the roof (there is a post on how we do this on the blog). Sometimes the wednesday group also works out on the wider estate clearing rhododendron and that sort of thing. If you have people who you think would be interested in joining in they would be most welcome. As the project progresses I’m sure there will be lots of other jobs people can get involved with as well.
Cheers
Dave
Dave
Owen mentioned you need help putting images together.
I can make a quick time file- a film with music- if you send me all the images from the raising.
I have a few too. Should be easy to inbed on your blog…
Clive
Clive
That would be great, sounds really interesting, will try and get them on a cd for you. Am sure we will see each other at a Transition town thing at some point soon, will try and have a chat to you then about it.
Cheers
Dave
Hey, enjoying your blog – my boyfriend and I are really looking forward to working with you in late September. Sorry to have missed the beams being raised but looks like there’s still plenty of interesting tasks to help with. Any idea where we’ll be by then – lime rendering? more shingles? :o)
Shona & Javi
Thanks Shona, I should think we will still be making shingles by then, alltough we may well also be onto earth plastering of inside walls and weaving ballustrades and barriers under handrails, its a bit difficult to tell much in advance exactly where we will be. Hope you have fun when you come over.
Cheers
Dave
Hi…..Great to see the progress on your building. It really is impressive. At Barrowhills School in Witley we are going to be building an iron-age roundhouse which we will use as an outdoor classroom to teach Forest School to the children. Any help with logs etc would be very gratefully received and any advice much appreciated.
Hi Andre
Thanks very much, perhaps you would like to come along to our apple pressing day on 1st Oct, it will be a good opportunity to see the building and have a chat.
Cheers
Dave
Hi Dave
Amazing to see the progress you have made on Swan Barn…it looks beautiful. Will there be any more clay plaster days or has it all been finished. I look forward to seeing the BBC programme tomorrow. Hope to hear from you soon. Thanks
Emma
Hi Emma
Our wednesday group of volunteers will no doubt be doing some more clay plastering as well as decorating and a number of other jobs, you are welcome to come and join in if you are nearby, sorry, but its really difficult to specify particular tasks for specific wednesdays at the moment.
Dave
What I good idea seem a shame that more of us don’t use these materials
Would love to become one of your volunteers , at any one of your centres .
I live in Birmingham , willing to travel within reason .
Hi Debra,
There are all sorts of volunteering opportunities around Birmingham, and of course across the country. More details are available on: http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/volunteering/
Dave and the team are not yet ready to recruit their Long Term Volunteers, but when they do, details will be available on the website.
Hi Debra
Not sure if you are still looking for volunteering opportunities, but if you are the latest post on the speckled wood blog decribes the current opportunity we have available.
Cheers
Dave
can you tell me if the likelyhood of getting planning for a small version of this type of house is improoving and have you any tips of the best way of going about it. my friend and i live an work in the countryside,wish to live sustainably and cannot afford to rent .but have a small feild.thanks
Hi Mandy
Speckled Wood was built on the footprint of an existing agricultural building, was always intended to be sustainable, and most importantly benefited from lots of (in writing) support from the local community. I’m sure all these factors contributed to success in planning approval.
Matthew
Great Job!
We are planning a strawbale home and I want to cover it with cedar on the outside and plaster inside. Can you tell us what type of waterproof breathable membrane you used and where we can order it? Thanks for sharing your adventure!
Johnny MAX & the Queen
Self-Sufficient Homestead Show
Hi Guys
We used a Klober Permo membrane for our building, a quick search on the internet will throw up plenty of suppliers. Good luck with your project.
Cheers
Dave
Hi Dave
I would like to pop over and help the group of volunteers on Wednesday if that ‘s possible. Do you know what you may be working on this Wednesday! Also not sure what time you meet….Great to see the Country File Programme….amazing progress you have made on the building.
Hope to see you Wednesday.
Emma
Dave
Nice to see your seasonal piece. I think we neglect the planting of non natives on land managed for conservation to our loss. They often have an important landscape role, provide useful wildlife cover – we do not have many native evergreens – and of course provide quick rotation renewable timber supplies. For those of us not blessed with thousands of acres of chestnut, species like European larch, western red cedar and some of the Cupressaceae are the only readily available decay resistant timbers that grow quickly.
My main reason for writing is however to enquire about the building. After the last holiday the earth plaster basecoat was still drying – and cracking. How did it end up and, and what does the finish coat look like? I see that there are quite varying recipes for earth plasters in the literature. How are the repainted windows holding up – did you have to use any special undercoat or treatment? Has the heating system been commissioned yet, and if so, how well does it work. How are the shingles working now that you have presumably had some serious rain?
I suspect that lots of us who have been following the build want to continue to hear how the building performs – both successes and problems.
Regards
Tony Lovelock
Hi Tony, really sorry its taken so long to get back to you. You will see from my latest post we have had a bit of a nightmare with the earth plaster. Am hoping things start to turn around from here on in! The shingles have been performing really well, we are completely weather tight. The heating system is great as well and I plan to post on this soon. We had to use a special primer on the windows, we just couldn’t get our eco paint to stick to them without it. It seems to have done the trick though and is holing up fine so far. Am hoping a new year is going to get things kick started and back on track. Hopefully will have some better news in the coming weeks.
Cheers
Dave
Dave,
Thanks for the posting on the earth plastering. Sad I know, but it may prove to be one of the most useful postings you have made. We should all learn from each other’s mistakes, not keep repeating them. It would be interesting to see if there are any responses from those who have used earth plasters successfully. My limited reading discovered very varying recipes for earth plaster, and not a great deal about how they might need to vary for different substrates. Cleft lathes must be very different, from, say, a cob wall.
I look forward to your posting on the heating system.
Thanks Tony, live and learn I guess! Will pass on some information on the heating system soon.
Dave
Hi,
I was advised to contact you directly by Andy Lewis. I’m looking for residential volunteering placements over the summer? Total novice but eager to learn before burying myself in books at uni!!
Any opportunities or where I could continue my search would be much appreciated 🙂
Many thanks,
Meryl
Thanks for this Meryl
We are currently involved in finishing off the long term volunteer house we are building, sometime in the next couple of weeks we will be advertising for people to come along and join us for a couple of days work on the property by way of a search for our long term volunteers. I will make sure I put a post on the blog notifying people of when to get in touch, so if you keep an eye on this site you should see when it comes to time to get in touch.
Cheers
Dave
Hi Meryl
If you are still interested in volunteering placements the latest post on the blog describes the current opportunity we have available.
Cheers
Dave
Hi there,
Do you have any volunteer opportunities in the woods or working with wood in August? We have a camper van so if your lovely new building is already full of volunteers we’d still be very happy to help!
Thanks and best wishes,
Katy
Hi Katy
Thanks ever so much for the offer, most of our opportunities working in the woods are later in the year, in august we have working holiday groups and at other times are haymaking and producing biomass (firewood) for our boiler, sorry, but probably a difficult time for getting people involved. We would welcome help later in the year though if you were still interested, and of course you are welcome to come and visit sometime, sorry I can’t be more help at the moment…. If you have time though you could always check out the NT working holidays website and see if there is anything there that grabs your attention, there are loads of interesting opportunities on it.
Thanks
Dave
Hi there,
I’m very interested in the external treatment of your bale walls. Am I right in thinking you have used a breathable membrane and then wood cladding? How are the bales protected against mice and other vermin if this is the case? Or is there a layer of render on the outside of the bales, beneath the wood?
Thank you very much in advance.
Nalin
Hi Nalin
The straw bales were coated in lime plaster everywhere throughout the building, if expesed to the weather they are then protected with wooden boards, if shetered under the verandah they had a finishing coat of lime plaster and limewash. The lime is the only protection against vermin, there is no other membrane or other barrier. So far it has worked fione, am hoping that will continiue!
Cheers
Dave
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[…] down on Mark’s patch he took me to see Swan barn farm a National Trust property and home to the Blackdown wardening team under the leadership of […]
Thanks Simon, very kind, liked the video of Mark on the Commons, looked like a fun tour!