We’re Baaaack!
12 July 2024
Hello again!
Well, this is embarrassing. We really didn’t mean to leave you without an update for so long… Somehow this year is flying by! (How are we halfway through the year? HOW?!)
In this update… We round up some of the excitements so far from 2024, make great progress on our new Stone Age building, have our first goat kid in years, run experiments with the National Trust, and more!
2024 so far...
In January, we redid all our paths around the site thanks to a generous grant from East Hants county council. Goodbye muddy tracks, hello accessibility!
In February, we opened to the public for the first time this year during a gloriously sunny half term. We also celebrated one year since we first broke ground on the Roman garden 🌿
In March, we welcomed Jess and Sofie, two new members of the events team. They’ve immediately got stuck in creating new and exciting events, from the Butser book festival in October to a five-day timber framing course in August!
In April, the brilliant volunteers from our textiles team completed their project to create felted draft excluders for one of our roundhouses, making it the cosiest on site. They then moved on to our Mesolithic shelters, which are now wrapped with skins for extra warmth.
In May, we celebrated Beltain 2024 — and what a day it was! We also held free family nature days for the local community, who helped us plant our crop field up with veggies 🍅🫛
And in June… Keep reading to see what we’ve been up to đź‘€
Making medieval nails
It’s not all ancient at Butser — last month we teamed up with archaeologists from the National Trust, as well as metallurgy students from West Dean College, for a deep dive into medieval shipbuilding.Â
There have been several finds of nails and roves at the medieval ship building site at Smallhythe Place, so we wanted to see how they might have been made — starting right at the beginning with smelting iron from ore.
After a weekend of work, the smelt was successful, and the fruits of our labour have been sent to West Dean College for processing ready for the next stage of the experiment.
Progress on our Stone Age build...
If you’ve been following this series, you’ll know why we’re so excited about this building. One of the experiments we wanted to run was using less cordage than our other Stone Age building — it’s inefficient and time-consuming to make — so we’re trying a whole new roofing technique that uses none at all.
The technique? Weaving! Led by Mark, the artist behind this year’s wickerman, our team of volunteers has beautifully woven a roof using willow, which has allowed us to start thatching straight on to the weave without having to tie it down with cordage. We’re using reed thatch, attached with hazel spars, and as you can see the work is already going absolutely great guns. Hats off to our brilliant weaving and thatching volunteers for making such amazing progress!
We have a goat kid!
After last year’s terrible disappointment, we were absolutely over the moon to welcome this precious little baby to the world just two weeks ago. After a close race on social media, the name Nutmeg was chosen — and we think it suits her perfectly.
Little Nutmeg is one of only around 70 female goats of this breed left in existence, and is a really stunning example of how wonderful English goats are. She’s beautiful, peppy, friendly, and smart — and also the third generation of goat on the farm, with her mum Sorrel and grandma Bella both at Butser.
Sadly, we had to take Nutmeg away from her mum as Sorrel’s health declined after the birth. Nutmeg is being hand-reared by the team, who are all totally smitten by her, while we look after Sorrel. Luckily Sorrel seems to be recovering, so we’re hoping to reintroduce her baby to her soon đź’š
Building works at Butser
If you’ve visited the site recently, you may have noticed some pretty dramatic groundworks going on at the top of our main car park. We’re preparing to construct a new building — and not the ancient kind. With the team growing and spaces to work and store things in becoming ever more cramped, we’re in need of something new. To that end, we’re busy with funding applications and plans for something that will include workshop space, offices, a new break room, and kitchen facilities. Watch this space!
Other building works on at the moment include rethatching the 9-post structure in the Iron Age village, and creating a new house for our goats. We’re also finally nearly finished re-walling the Little Woodbury roundhouse 🥳
Garden news
This month marks one year since our formal Roman garden was planted, and we’re absolutely chuffed with how established it is already looking. Gardener Immie is already looking ahead to some pretty exciting possibilities with vines… Will we see a Butser wine in the future? 🍷
In other news, the veg growing in the crop field is doing spectacularly — so well in fact that we’re coming down with the stuff! If you’re headed to Butser in the next few weeks and would like to help take some veg off our hands, let us know and we’ll get you a goody bag 🥬
As always, we’re hugely grateful for the efforts of our volunteers with our gardens. There’s an enormous amount of work that goes into keeping them looking this good!
That about does us for this update, though there’s plenty more on the horizon… As ever, thank you so much for your support, for being part of the Butser family and coming with us on this journey!
