Yippee! This year's boundary restoration works are complete!

Posted: December 15, 2011 at 16:09 pm Author: Sophie Nash

The Westonbirt Project is comprised of a number of elements including the restoration of landscape features and improvements to our electricity supply and car parking arrangements. Later stages will focus on new facilities which will improve visitor experiences. This year, Sophie Nash from the project team has been working with contractors to restore Westonbirt's historic boundaries, thanks to a Higher Level Stewardship grant from Natural England.

Yippee! We have now finished the boundary restoration works for this year. The boundaries around the arboretum form a discreet but vital part of the Grade I Registered Park and Garden and were highlighted in a conservation report a while ago as needing some attention.

We have thousands of metres of walls and railings of different styles that are in need of restoration work and we have now replaced or restored a total of 340 metres in the last few months, comprised of four different styles of boundary.

Section D

Cast iron railings, which form the entrance to the Old Arboretum at Down Gate. The work included complete repair of one of the vertical uprights on a corner which was damaged by a tree, straightening of some of the horizontal bars and re-leading some of the joins.

Before

After

Section E

Replacing modern wire and post stock fence to enable us to reinstate a traditional strained wire fence. The existing end posts and change of direction post were repaired and brought back into use.

Before

After

Section F

We needed to repair the original iron estate fencing which had been damaged at the base. We straightened the original fence and fixed new extended feet to each of the vertical uprights to give the fence stability. We also removed the modern wooden post and rail fence and replaced it with a galvanized mild steel fence in the same design as the original estate fence. To prevent the cattle from entering the Old Arboretum, we finished the end of the fence with a fan.

Before

After

Section C3

This section of boundary was looking a bit untidy and due to it’s prominent position next to the roadside banner we decided to reinstate a traditional dry stone ha-ha and remove the posts and barbed wire required to keep the cattle in the field.