Main Introduction

I’ve been involved with the Wychurst project for about a year and much of it has been spent daubing – that is making and applying the mix of clay, sand, soil, straw and cow dung that is used to infill the walls. The daubing has been making good progress in recent months, but this weekend we had a particular challenge at hand: we only had one day of work ahead, due to filmwork the following day, and three panels to fill, an amount that usually takes a whole weekend to complete. Steph, Steve and Gav had made it up a day early to get a head start on mixing the daub, but on the hottest day of the year so far, completing it was still going to be a challenge. Mission on.

I fought the clay and …I won

The first task of the day was claybreaking. This essentially involves breaking down and sifting the clay that sits in an ever-shrinking pile outside the hall, until it is suitable for inclusion in the daub mixture. At first glance you’d think that we are turning dirt into very slightly different dirt, but in fact it is vital to get the clay to the right consistency – if it’s damp or in lumps it will not mix properly with the other ingredients.

It’s hard work with spade and pickaxe, breaking rocks in the hot sun. A stray gust of wind whips the clay in the sieve into a sandstorm that coats everything. Including the inside of your mouth, if you’re not careful. However, morale on the daubing team is pretty high, especially as we can gather enough material to last us the day in a couple of hours. Even on the clay pile you’re likely to hear a joke or two, or if the palisade crew are around, a brisk rendition of a chain gang song.

Into the mix…

With enough clay broken for the time being, and a large team of daubers attacking the walls with some gusto, I was left free to help with preparing more daub. The rate at which we can produce daub has increased massively since we have started using a cement mixer, and we found that a team of three worked well for producing optimum amounts – one person to operate the mixer, one to gather the right quantity of materials, and one to perform the highly glamorous task of breaking up the cow dung into manageable amounts. This is not quite as unpleasant a task as it sounds – the dung is pretty innocuous by the time it reaches us, and rubber gloves help tremendously - we were particularly chuffed to receive a several packs from members in Orkney in a show of solidarity during the last work week.

We had such a large and enthusiastic daubing team that we needed to work at full tilt to keep up. We kept the mix coming when everyone else was on lunch, and Gav and Paul completed several mixes while we grabbed ours. The work was hard in the June heat, and unrelenting.

But I for one was kept going by the sight of barrowload after barrowload of daub coming out of the mixer (which two of us have decided to dub ‘Trevor’ as it sounds a bit like an Old English word for ‘mix’, ok we’re sad) and going up on the walls. It also helps seeing all the work being carried out on other parts of the site. Land being cleared, woodwork being done, and bridges being built (literally and metaphorically). It feels as if the energy and enthusiasm of the group as a whole keeps every one of us going. As volunteers, who will only get a chance to partake in the project once a month at most, we seem to make every moment count. Nigel, the Project’s coordinator, even remarked in wonder that he had to set our booking for that night’s dinner back by half an hour because people wouldn’t stop working! Not your average working day then.

And … relax!

Of course, the day was not all work. Ice cream breaks were well received, and a pub dinner courtesy of the BBC (for whom we were filming the next day) gave everyone the chance to kick back. Unfortunately I had to leave post-pub, but normally the chance to sit around a campfire in the building we have spent the day working on is worth it.

So could we meet the weekend’s challenge? The answer is: yes, and then some! Not only did we meet our initial challenge, but several extra panels were completed, including the first at the highest point of the hall.

Completing such a mammoth amount in such a short time really brought home to me some similarities between what we are doing, and what our ancestors achieved. The tools might be different, but the processes at the heart of things are the same. First of all the processes involved, from claybreaking to the mix itself, have been gradually refined. You never know how you can improve until you get stuck in. Ideas from different people (for example constructing a frame from which to hang the clay sieve, enabling sieving to be done quickly by one person) make the process that little bit better each time, until the difference is really noticeable, even in a relatively unskilled task. It’s a process, albeit on a larger scale and over a longer period of time, that must have been familiar when halls such as ours were built the first time round. Secondly is the way we work together, each part of the team relying on the other, and seeing that that reliance is well placed. It’s a rare feeling in modern times, as we sit in our fenced off homes and office cubicles.

We all know that when Wychurst is complete we will come as close as 21st century people can to experiencing life as it would have been lived in the times surrounding the Conquest. I would say that in the building of it we are getting a glimpse of that experience too.