Devon Woodland
In September 2019 we were approached to consider reclamation of a dramatic small abandoned quarry in Mid Devon. The quarry had been closed around 1900 and left to regenerate with dramatic almost Jurassic cliffs of red basalt – 50 million years older in fact than the Jurassic – being the plug of an extinct volcano. Dating back to the Permian period, the lava baked the surrounding sandstone, leaving behind a rubbly mix of trachybasalt rich in potassium, hematite, and calcite. The stone had been used as durable, almost un-carvable, quoins and dressings to rubble stone and lime wash buildings since medieval times – the parish Church of Crediton is a great example. Any road, with massive cliffs, overgrown with Oak, Ash, Hazel and native regen, with an understory of dogs mercury, bluebells (in parts) brambles nettles and great cloaks of old mans beard the trick was going to be how to preserve the wilderness and yet interject navigable paths, ways up and down and round the site with its hugely changing levels, and odd places to escape the rain or spend an afternoon communing with nature in all seasons. With the help of some astonishingly sensitive Devon Arborists and the owners regular gardeners a certain amount of control has been gained and stairways with rustic hand rails plus, after a long planning battle a couple of arbours and a shelter disguised as a woodman’s workshop. Such are the ways of deception in these days when it would be quite impossible to build a Rousham, unless you were a public body or figure. But one hopes this site has achieved a comfortable balance between man and nature, the sublime and the terrifying, but to do so requires relentless hard work and expense.