"THE MAN WHO CAN SEE BACK IN TIME........." Archies visit to Woodhayes.

 

Imagine walking down the High Street of your town and being able to see not just the people of the present around you, but people from the past - in detail. Roman legionaries on a drunken day off, crinolined Victorian ladies going about their shopping, Stone Age men in skins sharpening their flints for a mammoth hunt – all mingling with the people of today, and all of them completely unaware that their time periods are over-lapping, and it’s happening right under their noses.

But, somehow, you’re aware - you always have been. You can see them all as you walk down that street, going about your own business.  And these people from the past, they can see you, too, and want to talk to you, to tell you their stories, giving you information about their life and times that always seems to check out, sometimes showing you answers to questions that have puzzled historians for years – and sometimes even revealing that we’ve got history wrong.

It would make a great story, wouldn’t it – the extraordinary psychic who gets answers to history’s mysteries in ways no-one can understand? Because of course, this could only be a story, couldn’t it? It couldn’t happen in reality.   Except for one man, it does.

WHO IS ARCHY LEE?

This is the story of a Somerset man with an amazing gift:  A salt of the earth, funny, colourful character, ARCHY LEE paints detailed pictures with the actual words of the people who once lived on the land or in the buildings where we live and work now

He describes their trades, their homes, their garments, their smells - and recounts the tittle-tattle and revelations they tell him.  Seemingly able to step outside time, he’s met up with all kinds of people from different eras, ranging from members of the Lost Legion to Henry VIII, from anonymous monks to President Kennedy – and they’ve all had fascinating facts to reveal, some of which have the potential to re-write history.  Archy is regularly remarkably accurate with what he reports. And yet he is no historian and has no prior knowledge of the people and times he’s ‘seeing’ and reporting.  He doesn’t possess a computer, and has no interest in using one. Yet much of the information he gleans is verifiable - although very often it takes an expert researcher considerable time and effort to confirm it. Other material he reports is tantalising and contentious, challenging what we think we know about the past. His insightful, humorous and engaging talent is quite extraordinary and probably unique. He has many fans and has featured in print & on radio.

read about Archie's visit to Woodhayes and what he found here :

Archie Lee's Visit to Woodhayes in the February 2015

Oak and Sweet Chestnut Timber Milling

There's nothing like using timber which has grown for 100's of years at Woodhayes for your own use. We have a project to put up a post and rail fence around an extended garden to Tillicks Cottage the farm labourers cottage in order to provide more garden to the Cottage. We did not have to look far for timber as we had already extracted a lot of timber from Crownall Wood this summer but there was also a very large dead parkland oak tree. We contacted Francis Huffman from Honiton Hardwoods who collected the timber we wanted to be used for 180 meteres and rails and 32 x  2 meter posts. The following photos show the process and what turned out to be a big surprise.

Multiple Timber Trunks extracted from Crownall Wood, including Ash, Sweet Chesnut, Oak ad Sycamore. 

Cross section of an Ash Tree

Francis Lifting Large Oak Timber trunk into position for Milling.

Oak Trunk edges closer to Timber Milling bench

Francis prepares large Oak Trunk for cutting

First Slice to take off outer section of the Trunk

This is what we found a treasure of oak design showing Wavey oak grains and cat's paws or Pippy Oak, so this oak was to good for posts, so we decided to have 1- 1.1/2 inch planks made which we will use for kitchen work tops for the new kitchen we plan for Tillicks Cottage

Another image showing the cat's paws, this type of wood makes £40-50 per cubic foot at British Hardwoods. so we were right to have this wood made into planks.

Francis making more cuts to the main oak Trunk.

The Oak Boards start to stack up , note that we have put wooden dividers between each plank to allow for circulation of air to help with the drying. Drying takes approximately 1 year per inch.

here are posts being made from the heart of the Trunk, note some rot at the end of the post.

A Sweet Chestnut is up next, this wood is as hard as oak but more prone to splitting, so one needs to be careful when cutting the trunk.

Another view of the Sweet Chestnut ready to be sawn.

Here is the first Cut

Here is the timber beautifully stacked back at the farm, note that the timber posts, rails and planks have spaced out dividers to allow for air circulation helping with the drying process. The wood will need 2-3 years to dry, it will then be ready to be used. The Timber planks will have to be sanded to leave a polished surface for the kitchen work tops, we will revisit that process in a few years from now.

Metal Detector Finds at Woodhayes

We had Scott and his son from Bristol sweep some fields one weekend in August and these are some of the finds they have come up with over 4 hours detecting. Scott cleaned up the items and they are as follows :

Large buckle probably a horse strap ,
Other buckle belt 1600 ,
Two fantastic thimbles , one  pewter,  the smaller one is  brass
Iron wedge,
Chest of draws handle,
Musket ball,
Spur buckle or a small shoe buckle 1600-1700 ,
1935 six pence,
Flat button with initials of cs on it

We hope to see Scott and his son back here again soon and we will update you with his finds.

Archaeological finds at Woodhayes

We have uncovered some exciting finds at Woodhayes thanks to Seán Goddard, a geophysicist from the Archaeology Department at Exeter University. He visited Woodhayes to look at the topography and discover more about its history.

Smelting in the Blackdown Hills
Various surveys have found evidence of ironworking in the Blackdown Hills, where we are based. There is some evidence for prehistoric smelting, the Romans may have continued this and it carried on into the medieval period.

The industry grew here due to the geology and abundant timber - a fuel source for the furnaces. The area is dominated by an outcrop of 'Upper Greensand', which gives the characteristic long level plateaux of the hills. The iron is located in the upper levels of the Greensand. Extraction pits are still visible locally at Kentisbeare, Broadhembury and Sheldon.

Sean told us that the ore from the Greensand plateaux is Siderite- not the best ore in the world- but is self-fluxing (meaning it is free running) and easy to smelt.

Evidence
The majority of evidence is based on finds of distinctive 'tap slag', which had been tapped from the furnace in a fluid state. The larger pieces have a glossy, rippled surface produced by the hardening of successive flows of molten slags from the base of the furnaces. They have been used as building materials notably in the 14 Century walls of Hemyock Castle. The largest piece recorded so far was found at Upottery and weighed 8.8kg. Below is the piece found on the Woodhayes land.


Slag found at Woodhayes


Dating
There is a C14 early Roman (AD 50-70) dated slag deposit in Upottery, we strongly suspect what we have is also Roman. The Roman military must have had the iron franchise in the area and we hope Woodhayes might have been their base.

Other finds
We also found a sherd of pottery adjacent to a pipe trench in the field. Sean's pot expert believes it is 18th Century trailed slipware from Donyatt, Somerset and related kilns (which may have included Honiton too.) It comes from the shoulder of a closed form such as a bucket-handled pot or a chamber pot.
 

 

Donyatt pottery sherd

 

Sean plans to return as he would also like to visit the charcoal deposit in Crownall wood. This is likely to be a charcoal burning platform and if so, would support the case for iron smelting in the immediate area.

All very interesting ! Watch this space for more details

Water Pipe laying update

We have decided to upgrade the water pipe here at Woodhayes, the previous pipe was installed in the 1950's, this was a metal pipe which has been prone to leaks due to rust. So we have now installed 800 meters of 32 mm pipe.

You can see the path of the trench here, we have Reg Dyer from Yarcombe doing the work with a large tracked digger. Top soil is removed first and placed in the outer area and then clay is dug and placed nearer the trench, this allows the digger to back fill leaving top soil to go on last.

This photo shows a length of the black 60 mm diameter coil  which covers the 32 mm water pipe, the small length of soil pipe covers the connection junction which joins the two lengths of 32 mm water pipe.

This picture shows the trench set 5 meters from the oak tree so that we  did not damage the root system. The pipe laying was quite a task especially connecting the junctions with high pressure. The pressure is now twice what it was before which suggests there were leaks elsewhere, so we are now relieved that the new pipe is in place.

This shows another section of the coiled pipe and a small section showing a join.

Water Water everywhere..

At Woodhayes Farm we are blessed with our own private Spring Water supply. The farm lies below a very large Artesian well containing thousands of gallons of water, consequently there are many springs on the farm. 

Further to the farm diversification into new offices, holiday let and art gallery, we have decided to upgrade all the water system here to cover our additional needs.  

The first phase is to replace the existing metal pipes with new PVC water pipes as we have started to encounter holes and fractures in the pipes caused by rust and old age.  Then we will be putting in a new silt trap to extract sand and silt created from the source of the spring; this has to be cleaned out each year with a manual flushing system. 

At the farm end we are restoring the old 10,500 Litre reservoir, filling in cracks and re-grouting the inside with a waterproof compound. We have also just installed a new 10,000 Litre tank which will double our capacity to 20,500 Litres. 

This November a specialist contractor will bring in a machine to dig a trench for the new PVC water pipe to connect the source of the spring to the reservoirs.

Watch this space for more news and pictures of the new pipes' installation.

New 10,000 Litre black water tank beside the old brick and concrete reservoir built into the ground 

FSB delegation visits No 10

On 24 June I was invited to be part of a delegation from the FSB (Federation of Small Businesses) asked to a  meeting at 10 Downing Street. Originally we were supposed to meet David Cameron but the verdict of the phone-hacking trial of his previous special adviser, Andy Coulson, had been announced that day, so understandably he was otherwise engaged.

Nevertheless, we had an insightful meeting and it was certainly a useful platform to voice some of the concerns and recommendations of our members. During the meeting we called for :

• Switch to growth finance rather than just start-ups
• Boost to International Festival for Business
• Better tasking of Ambassadors overseas for UK businesses wanting to trade in those markets
• Improved links between civil servants and business
• UKTI and UKEF awareness needs to be tackled, but the services they offer are pretty good, including in the regions
• Business services staff in UKTI and elsewhere should have a business background
• Their concern to be noted about a shift of resource from small to medium-sized companies in UKTI

Daniel Korski, who is David Cameron's Special Advisor for Enterprise, confirmed that all these points had been taken board and would be discussed at Cabinet. 

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