26 May 2011
Given that all of this has been so long in the planning, it was surprising what a special day today felt like – the moment when the Green Light finally went on for real.
I’ve been harbouring ambitions for digging in Quebec for probably 20 years now. It’s been such a strange little corner of Studley, although it sounds from the documentary sources that it’s been like that for over two centuries, one way or another.
The logic suggests that there should be really interesting structures surviving on the site. The Marquis of Ripon decision to fill the pond should have sealed the original fabric intact under a good protective layer. I’m not at all clear why he decided to fill it in – the most likely explanation is that, like so much else, it was in declining condition, and the easy option was just to do away with it. That simplifying tendency does characterise so much of his management of the gardens. Not being a fan of imported species myself, I can only be grateful that he didn’t go crazy with rhododendrons as he did on Tent Hill. Given how Quebec floods, if he had there’d be little else growing beside from Skell from here to Ripon!
I wonder what the form of the islands and the ponds will look like. A clay lining seems very likely, and that really should have survived any form of mistreatment. Who knows about the shores though. The perimeter and the islands needn’t be made in the same way, of course. Where we’ve looked at this sort of thing previously, the construction methods have been surprisingly sophisticated – and never the same in any two locations.
The first job today was a site meeting with Justin Garner-Lahire from Field Archaeology Specialists. Justin and FAS have done some excellent work for us previously at Studley, most recently on the Lake Project in 2010. Their expertise will be crucial to this project’s success – and it will be interesting to see how managing an external contractor’s work with visitors, in this level of intensity, will work out.
Much of the rest of the day was spent giving a talk and tour of the gardens to the regular meeting of North Yorkshire Conservation Officers – the latter including talking about the project for the first time publicly.
At 4pm, the last appointment of another busy day at Fountains was the key meeting with Sarah (Conservation Manager), Jen (Visitor Experience and Marketing) and Tessa (Learning and Interpretation). Having designed the project back in the autumn, and then discussed it through the early months of the year, it has recently been reviewed by all key colleagues in the estate – with a certain amount of tweaking in one direction or another. At last we were all able to meet together, and iron out the wrinkles, successfully. The project will now move centre stage, though that’s going to mean a lot of work in the coming weeks.
The idea to include a blog is a great one. The blog for the Dunstanburgh survey was one of the most popular pages ever run by English Heritage. But I do feel a little intimidated. What will people be interested in reading, I wonder? I’ve not been a blog reader so far – obviously I have to start!
I was also really taken with the idea that we should mount the on-site interpretation on panels shaped like figure-silhouettes. The real test of this idea is going to be cost, and production timetable – time is short. Well worth investigating the idea, and an idea to hold in reserve for another occasion even if its not possible this time round.
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