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Windsor Great Park

Post and Rail in Marlcliff

Attingham National Trust

Croome National Trust

More Gates!

Stowe Paling

Fruit Cage

Entrance Gates

Dorney Revisited

We revisited clients at Dorney to add a paling fence to shelter their veg patch and a boundary fence of 4’6″ high Stowe Paling to keep out the cattle that graze the common. We also made and installed a pair of cleft oak gates to complement the cattle grid.

 

Working Method

Hand digging at Woxeter Roman City, The English Heritage site near Shrewsbury. Thanks to Nigel Baker, archaeologist for these photos. He had the pleasure of studying our 127 post holes.

Rustic Post and Rail

Gates, henge and fencing

Stowe Paling with henge and gate to segregate the vegetable patch from the main garden.

Stowe Landscape Gardens

We completed our run of paling fencing at National Trust Stowe, ringing the Home Park and former golf course. This is the culmination of three years work for us. The final section joined up with a bespoke handcrafted steel estate fence.

Composting Area

We installed a ring fence for a composting area on an estate in the Cotswolds. We left our lunch unattended. Apples were eaten, crisps and sandwiches were crushed and left rather unappetising.

Chicken Fence

Our client was losing chickens to the fox. We installed a cleft oak fence based on our Charlecote Paling and a number of gates. So far the chicks are safe.

Fire

Struck by fire back in March. At one point there were five fire engines. We don’t know the cause. All our firewood and a large amount of stock were lost. The NFU, our insurers, were great.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

February/March 2020 at Cleftwood

Wroxeter Roman City

We installed here last month. What a fantastic site, once the fourth largest city in Britain. The remains of the bathhouse are colossal and the “Old Work” is an amazing remnant 7m tall. You get a real feel for Roman civilisation.

Stokesay Castle

 

Stowe Golf Course

 

We are currently installing this five feet high cleft oak Deer Fence on the new golf course at Stowe School. The golf course has moved from its site next to the main buildings of the school over towards Stowe Castle. The previous site will be restored to the original designs of Capability Brown.

Kenilworth Castle

We replaced a tired sawn boundary fence at this wonderful English Heritage site with more traditional and sympathetic cleft oak.

Arthur’s Stone

 

We recently replaced the decaying sawn post and rail fence at this beautiful English Heritage site overlooking both the Wye and Golden Valleys in Herefordshire. The cleft two rail has a light touch but will still protect this ancient and special site from reckless cars and bikes.

Whilst working here we were touched by the respect and sensitivity people gave the site (candles and notes within the chamber).

Coo Palace (translation Cow Palace or Model Dairy)

 

Last week we sent a pallet of Post and Rail and a gate to this splendid site overlooking Wigtown Bay, Dumfries and Galloway. Originally built in a mixture of Arts and Crafts, Gothic and Italianate styles the dairy housed the owners twelve Belted Galloway cows. The”A” listed buildings had fallen into serious disrepair and lay empty for years with various schemes for restoration falling through.

The imaginative people at HPB ( www.HPB.co.uk ), old customers of ours, are nearly finished with the restorations turning the site into a complex of luxury holiday lets.

It’s great to be a part of this project; as the client says of our fencing “It is not cheap but it looks great. I wish that we had used it at …………..”

 

Cleft Oak Bollards

Cars were parking on verges and ripping up the grass in Charlecote village. The parish council asked us to provide these bollards to solve the problem. They match the adjoining  NT deer fence at Charlecote Park, they’re environmentally friendly and the cleft quarter trees won’t put up with much argument! Let’s look to a future of verdant verges…

 

Bollards and Palings

We installed this 3′ high cleft oak fence at Charlecote near Stratford upon Avon this week. It echoes the 6′ high deer fence at the National Trust Charlecote Park across the road.

 

Castles and Mountains

We’ve taken on a number of jobs for English Heritage including Longtown Castle on the Welsh border in the shadow of the Black Mountain. Three rail post and rail rings the Keep and separates the Bailey from the steep drops below. It’s A beautiful place to work and the locals are very friendly and supportive.

Interesting Wildlife

We are lucky enough to work in some fantastic places, either sourcing our timber or installing, and even the wildlife around our barn can be quite spectacular. Robins and wrens nest every year and swallows always fly in to check us out but invariably decide we are too noisy. Barn owls and stoats are regular visitors to keep a check on our mice and voles. Kites and buzzards mewl above. There are hares, roe and muntjac in the fields around.

Charlecote Park Fence Repairs

Over the course of last Winter cars crashed through the cleft oak deer fence at Charlecote Park (National Trust) nine times. Luckily no-one was killed or seriously hurt. It took the insurance companies up to last month to agree to pay for fencing repairs.

Return to Stowe

We’re back this Autumn at National Trust Stowe Landscape Gardens with another tranche of fencing in the Home Park. We’re starting by Eleven Acre Lake and working up past Queen Caroline’s statue towards the edge of Home Park near Boycott. It will be an interesting install with the golf course hard on the fence line (FORE!).

 

Rutland Mansion

 

 

Cleft Oak to Argyll

Here’s a pair of gates we recently sent up to an estate on the shores of Loch Fyne. They were delivered by pallet with 40 metres of our three rail post and rail.

Cambridge Botanic Gardens

Cambridge Botanic Gardens have been using our products for a number of years now. They have previously had post and rail to protect the root systems of ancient and vulnerable trees. They are now using our fencing to separate off a Discovery area  and have installed these totems as a point of interest. The largest are 12′ out of the ground, quarter trees. They were rather heavy!

Stowe Landscape Gardens

 

Work continues at Stowe with an initial 250 metres of fencing to border the Home Park. When the golf course moves this area will be taken back into the gardens.

Cleft Oak Gates

Customers in Kent have been updating their grounds over the past ten years or so and we have just completed these gates to go with a new run of fencing.

Medieval Fencing?

Here’s some fencing we put up three years ago in a local village. It’s basically cleft oak post and rail with oak weave around oak staves. There are no nails or other fixings. When nails were expensive and hard to come by this would have been a logical but labour intensive solution. Before pulped board and plastics weave was one of the few ways to fill a large gap (as with wattle and daub).

Cleft Oak Henge

A client in a local village wanted to replace a tired sawn softwood fence. The brief was primarily aesthetic but also something that would chime with the thatched cottage (a former village pub) and would be more durable than its disappointing predecessor. Cleft oak Stowe Paling with a cleft oak Henge and gate were the answer.

Cleft Oak Deer Fence

An interesting day at the Faccombe Estate in Hampshire looking around their beautiful acres of woodland for oak suitable for cleaving into fencing materials. Whilst there we took some photos of our Charlecote Paling expertly installed by contractors Starveacre Fencing. The Paling borders the deer park, in front of the pub, The Jack Russell, which is being refurbished (and will be heated by a wood boiler with estate supplied wood fuel).

Varieties of Cleft Oak Post and Rail

Just a few photos to demonstrate the variety of post and rail and various uses, from the smallholding to the park via roadside and garden.

Ten Years On..

“Just thought you might like to see some pictures 10 years on, then and now.

We remain delighted with the fencing.”

New Website

Thanks for coming here to take a look. We had great fun making the videos. The external scenes were shot at NT Stowe, in the Claydon Estate woodlands, and at our workshop near Swanbourne. I was surprised at the perfectionism of the crew. In the age of the “selfie” and the omnipresent camera phone it was great to see the awesome equipment and the time taken to get things just right.

The drone flying at Stowe was also very impressive; such control and stability. The guy flying it is a helicopter pilot so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at his professionalism. I think my favourite shot is the ring of post and rail around the Holm oaks from above.

A big thanks to Movies Darling for producing the videos. The editing was a work of art. They also composed the music.