Butser team member Phelim shares an update from the latest session on the Bronze Age project as the veterans and volunteers carried on the walling job, tried out cordage using Lime Bast and raised the first posts and rafters for the roof!

After the fun and games of the hunting and cooking of the previous session, the last session of the Bronze Age project returned to important work of building the Round House. Life though is never normal at Butser Ancient Farm and Trevor spent most of his day being interviewed and filmed for the BBC’s “Digging for Britain”. This series had followed the excavation at Dunch Hill on Salisbury Plain that had uncovered the house and was eager to follow the reconstruction. While filming has been taking place through out the project so far, this time Butser had the privilege of having a number of people from “Digging for Britain”, including Dr Stuart Prior, Reader in Archaeology at the University of Bristol and one of the presenters of the programme. The general rule is that filming means your task takes at least twice as long as normal so while Trevor was miked up and in front of the camera the rest of the team got on with building the earth and clunch walls.

Thursday promised rain in the afternoon so the morning was taken up bashing chalk to make the clunch for two of the walls. To define clunch, as used at Butser, it is a mix of chalk, water, straw (or other fibre) and sometimes dirt to make a form of concrete. This is sometimes called cob, cobb or clom. (To confuse matters cob, cobb and clom do not need to have chalk added and clunch can refer to large “bricks” of limestone used in building – hence the need to define what we mean at Butser by the term.) As you need to let clunch dry before you build too high, not as much wall was built as we would have liked, but slow and steady wins the race. The other task was taking the bark of the posts that became the central post and the main rafters. As a basic measure the central post had to be approaching 6 metres or about 9 ft 8 inches tall. This of course makes health and safety a priority, especially as the Farm is open to the public. But more of that in a moment…….

The other activity on the Wednesday and Thursday was led by the wonderful Kat. A number of weeks ago Claire had led a team into the woods to harvest the bark from the English Lime or Lynden Tree, with the aim of making Lime Bast. This is rope made from the fibres of the inner bark. The bark was split into two groups, one was put in fresh water and the other put into salt water to see if there was any difference in the quality of bast produce. The process is called retting. Collins English Dictionary defines retting as the “present participle of the verb” ret. Ret is, according to the same dictionary, a transitive verb defined as “to moisten or soak (flax, hemp, jute, etc) to promote bacterial action in order to facilitate separation of the fibres from the woody tissue by beating”. There will be no surprise to anyone who has been down to the Bronze Age area while this retting process was happening that the word ret comes from the same Germanic root as the word rot. You can only imagine what the smell of retting/rotting bark and stagnant water was like. We have been wondering what the water could be used for, but an internet search suggests that the Norse Men, Saxons, Iron Age and Bronze Age Brits, Romans and others, up to the modern day, who regularly made Lime Bast did the retting in moving water meaning that the cellulose gunk that it produces would have been washed away thereby avoiding the smell that retting something in still water produces. By the end of Friday the bast was hanging to dry in various houses ready to be made into cordage and rope.

Friday came, with the promise of more rain. That day also came with excitement as we were going to, drum roll please, put up the central post (as well as do some more wall building). More bark was stripped off poles and by lunch time Holly had arrived and was ready to film the work. Little did we know how things were going to go. 

As the post hole is not exactly central it had been decided to add a couple of bits of wood to act as artificial crotches. Some of us looked at the post chosen and questioned whether it was actually too tall. We were assured it was not, it had been measured and the angle created when the main rafters were put on would be the needed 45 degrees. Carefully the pole was lifted into the hole, and clunch, which sets like concrete when it dries, was poured in to hold it in place. The team then went for a well earned lunch break. We were sat down, enjoying the food provided, when Trevor came in and spoke the dreaded words “I think the post is too tall and we need to take it down and cut some off”. This then came the afternoon activity.

How difficult can it be to take a post out of the ground? With health and safety in mind a lot of discussion went on to decide how to get the post down safely. In the end it was decided to try and lift the pole out. The clunch acted like quicksand and every time people pulled the clunch created a vacuum. This meant that the clunch had to be dug out, the hole widened, and a slight ramp excavated to allow the post to come out. Then it was laid down, the excess cut off and then re-erected. All this was being filmed but how much of the footage will be useable could be an issue as some of the language spoken is not suitable for a family friendly site like Butser Plus. The suggestion was that Holly cuts the sound and either speeds it up with the music from Benny Hill playing in the background or turns the footage to black and white, and adds captions like an old Charlie Chaplain, Harold Lloyd, or Buster Keaton movie.

The final task of the day was the raising of the four main rafters. These were rested on the crutches and then connected to the lintels with timber locks. The next stage will be lashing the rafters together at the top, connecting them properly to the lintels, and putting a “collar” on to rest the remainder of the lintels on. Due to the fact that we have not connected the lintels properly we are currently not able to let members of the public down to the Bronze Age house, we don’t expect them to move but it is better to be safe and not risk someone getting hurt. It is nice though that people can actually see something that is starting to look house like rather than a wooden copy of Stone Henge.

To support our Bronze Age Roundhouse project with Operation Nightingale and discover more behind the scenes footage of the build head to at www.butserplus.com where we are releasing weekly video episodes about work and projects at the farm. Thank you!