On Sunday a group of approx 12 Lincoln conservation group volunteers arrived at the Rauceby Warren nature reserve. A lovely nature reserve just south of Sleaford, bordered by traditional dry-stone walling. The walls are now becoming old and starting to crumble a little so the aim of the day was to help in the big task of giving these walls a new lease of life & providing habitat for lizards, frogs and insects.
Sarah Evans (the lady who runs the reserve) and Derek, a retired dry-stone walling expert and our tutor for the day met us at 10 and began by talking us through how they and other volunteer groups have been steadily rebuilding the reserves old stone walls around its perimeter with fresh, new limestone ones.
After a little safety talk we got down to work. We began by preparing our building materials (putting the stones into piles!), making sure that the heavier stones to be used for the base of the wall were nearest the foundations and the thin, lighter stones to be used on the top were furthest away.
Half the group started dismantling parts of the old wall and digging out new foundations whilst the other half worked on continuing the wall from where the last volunteer group had left off.
It was hard at first to find the correct stones to fit together in the jigsaw-like way that these type of walls are built but by lunchtime we were starting to get the hang of it, picking the right stones to fit together and chipping pieces off others to fit into the more awkward gaps.
Over lunch we looked at photographs of some of Derek’s work. He has been doing this sort of work for over fifteen years, which means that he has quite an impressive (and daunting!) portfolio.
In the afternoon some of the group continued finishing off the top of the walls, putting some of the larger, flat stones (coping stones) onto their sides to create the finished effect while the rest of the group either finished off digging out the footings or continued to build the wall upwards.
By the end of the day a good three metres of really quite impressive looking wall had been built and another four metres of new footings were all ready for the next group of volunteers on Monday morning.
A fun Sunday on a lovely nature reserve spent learning a new skill. A great day all round.
Helen A.