Community

JOINED UP THINKING

Bernard White, Joiner

Image: Len Copland

For over 30 years, the future of Sherborne House has hung in the balance – a treasured Grade I listed mansion simply waiting to be brought back to life. With planning permission in place and a creative vision that will inspire the folk of Sherborne and beyond, I’m honoured to be part of the team of master craftspeople and engineers restoring our town’s glorious building. I’ve been on the project since February and work is certainly starting to ramp up. As a local resident myself, this extraordinary renovation project brings with it a lot of pride. I will get to see some of my handy-work daily – both from a distance and up close.

Having been a joiner for the best part of 35 years, I’ve worked on many old buildings across the globe. Most recently in New Zealand on a property about five times the size of Sherborne House – also destined to become an art gallery. But there’s something special about transforming something on your doorstep.

Grade I buildings are of special interest to the general public but are absolutely thrilling as a tradesman. There is nothing quite like restoring an old building and picking apart its past to preserve for the future – all while saving the fragile fabric of the property.

We’ve met the challenge of making the structure secure, and now we are moving on towards rebuilding it, which in my mind is the best part. We’ll rebuild identically, not because it’s nice to build in the traditional style, but because we need the building to behave just like it was intended to and in line with its historic provenance.

Listed buildings are protected by law to prevent unauthorised changes being made to them. There are several different standards that must be met when dealing with the features on a listed building – from opting to repair instead of replacing features to documenting and photographing each step of the process to show you’ve honoured the visual and physical heritage.

When it comes to woodwork, both the interior and

exterior features of old properties often need restoring due to natural damage that’s occurred from daily life over the years. There are many challenges to look out for, but water damage ranks fairly highly. As wood is a naturally occurring material, it is quite porous and will take on water, causing it to swell, and then when it loses water, it causes cracks and warping.

We’re working from the top floor down at The Sherborne. The first step is to assess. We then repair where we can, to retain as much as possible from the historic building. The materials we use are ‘like for like’. We’ve kept the original pieces as far as we can, wherever we can. Unless it’s falling to pieces, we’re reusing it, scarfing new wood to the original – that’s the general rule. Some of the panelling is new, and that’s how it must be, but there’s no distressing as such to make it feel old. Rather we place the new beside the old and let the painters make a good job of blending it all together.

The first phase of work on the second floor has taken us about four months. The second floor is pretty much complete now in terms of joinery – the decorators have gallantly moved in. The paintwork is going to look stunning and it’s at that moment you get to see all your hard work pay off.

We’re currently on the first floor, which will take about the same time as the floor above. We’re in the midst of running services through the building, so the flooring cannot be fully put back, though our joinery team have repaired around 40 floorboards and laid down near to 300 in their original condition and position so far this year. Whilst we await the services, we’re concentrating on the historic panelling and the decorative cornice, and we’ll be doing the all-important windows shortly now that the scaffold is up.

The most intricate element so far has been repairing the original panelling, which had suffered a lot of neglect and required a great deal of scarfing. In places right now, you can catch a glimpse of how dramatically changed Sherborne House will be after the restoration in its new life as The Sherborne. Beneath the centuries of life that unfolded within these walls, lies an extraordinary structural story.

We’ve uncovered a few little niceties, one being the fireplace on the first floor. We found that when we removed some of the jute around the fireplace, we discovered a mould underneath that had been covered up presumably not long after it had been built. We’ll never truly know why it was hidden, but fashions do change, so it could be that – the mystery is both a source of appeal and frustration.

Whilst working on the panels we discovered that they had in fact been reversed, and hessian had been placed over them. So, we took that off, which led us to realise how the room originally was, that being fantastic. It now looks a lot better than it did covered in hessian. We’ve put the panelling back just as we found it – reversed – to keep the history in line.

I’ve pretty much always worked on old buildings and just love them. They kind of fight back sometimes: things might crumble, features you think are sound turn out not to be, and many days require true ‘out of the box’ thinking. One of the biggest difficulties working on these kinds of buildings can be with the levels because nothing is level and ‘plumb’. You must take a look and manage it as you go, balancing it out by eye. Purists would probably put everything plumb and perfect but it’s horses for courses, and I personally enjoy keeping the character – and integrity.

Things never go to plan with buildings like this and that’s the thrill of it.

thesherborne.uk

Join us on the first Wednesday of the month at 3pm and 7pm

Digby Hall, Hound Street

2nd November: Caravaggio’s Final Years - A Rebel on the Run 7th December: Toulouse Lautrec - The Golden Age of Cabaret NEW Programme can be seen at www.theartssocietysherborne.org

Come as a visitor or join now, gaining 2 months of free membership theartssocietysherborne.org

MARKET KNOWLEDGE

GEORGE NORBERT-MUNNS, STONY GROVES

Welcome to The Sherborne Market! What brings you here?

Only being a stone’s throw from Sherborne, it’s a natural fit for us. The lovely people of Sherborne are a very welcoming bunch too.

Where have you travelled from?

Originally Christchurch, New Zealand, but we live in Stratton now – a little village northwest of Dorchester.

Tell us about what you’re selling?

We specialise in high-end food products, in particular, protected-status gourmet Kampot peppercorns from Cambodia, pink and smoked Himalayan salt from Pakistan, and fine loose-leaf caffeinated and herbal teas from Germany. We’re always working on bringing out new luxury products and are looking forward to launching some pretty special items next spring.

Where and when did it all begin?

My wife and I lived in Cambodia, Southeast Asia, for almost a decade. After leaving to start a family here in the UK, we wanted to keep a little part of it in our lives. One day we’d like to take our children there to see what we did in those years. During the Covid pandemic, my old business collapsed and I wanted to build something new, exciting and totally different from my previous interests in hospitality. After many, many ideas and months of research, we came to the conclusion that there was room for a high-end food business that would promote the world-famous incredible black, red, and white peppercorns of Cambodia. Now, after almost two years of selling at markets and food fairs, we’re taking a big leap into food festivals in Dorset, Devon, Hampshire and further afield in 2023. It’s time to push the boat out and show the UK what Stony Groves is all about.

What do you enjoy most about selling at markets?

One of the most enjoyable parts of trading at markets is the people you meet and the ties that you create with both fellow traders and customers. In addition, it’s the responses from members of the public when they sample products and are blown away by the flavours and quality. I think the most enjoyable part though is meeting people who already know about Kampot pepper and/or have been to Cambodia. They’re a real treat to serve as they always have the same passion for Kampot pepper that we do. They’ll usually buy some pepper too!

If you get the chance, which fellow stallholders here at Sherborne would you like to visit?

Elly Harvey Silver – her pieces are beautiful and go down a treat when returning home with gifts for my girls. Baycraft Studio – their steam-bent oak planters are lovely. Kat and Steve are pretty cool too.

Where can people find you on market day?

Opposite Looks Like a Right Lemon on Cheap Street. Look for ‘THE CHAMPAGNE OF PEPPER’. Sadly, we will only be at the November market as we’re going home to New Zealand for Christmas (the first time in four years). Don’t forget to pick up your Christmas gifts a bit earlier this year. If you are unable to make the Sherborne Market in November, then you can shop on our website – delivery is always included and we’re taking orders up until Thursday 1st December.

OUR MAN IN WESTMINSTER

Chris Loder MP, Member of Parliament for West Dorset

Image: Len Copland

Now, more than ever before, during this difficult period with the cost of living, we are seeing perhaps the greatest reality check on our food supply since the Second World War meaning we need to confront some of the concerning realities of our current land use policies that have implications for the future provision of produce given we only have a 60% self-sufficiency.

I am as passionate about the need to conserve and enhance the natural environment as anyone else. Indeed I always seek to take every opportunity to praise the work of West Dorset’s environmentally conscious farmers, many like Hollis Mead Dairy in my view are prime case studies on what productive, sustainable farming should look like.

We are heading for a conflict in the coming months – a conflict between the need to be more self-sufficient for food and the environmental agenda of re-wilding, carbon sequestration and solar energy provision – because our land can only be used for one. The unbelievable approval by Dorset Council of a 180-acre solar farm in Lillington on farmland has brought this into stark contrast.

We are seeing - not just in West Dorset - but across the whole of the UK, thousands of acres of productive farmland potentially being reverted to ‘rewilding’, being hidden beneath waves of solar panels, or removed from production by investment companies to cover with plantations to offset carbon. That might sound good, but the situation we now face requires us to think about this again.

Should we be putting all our eggs in one basket? Much like the sudden push to switch over to electric cars. Although we are seeing real inroads in terms of setting up new charging points and infrastructure to accommodate them, is it really sustainable to base our transport network on electricity – a commodity that is notoriously difficult to store? Even battery storage would require vast quantities of lithium – a product often unscrupulously sourced at huge cost to the planet.

In Scotland alone, the percentage of forest cover is at 18% compared to 6% only a century ago, with the Scottish Government hoping to raise this to 21%. Similarly, the UK Government has hoped to increase English forest coverage by 2% before 2050. On paper, these are all easy pledges to get on board with and feel the right thing to do.

But that 2% equates to roughly another 2,600 square kilometres of land removed from food production. And, at the same time only 58% of English woodland is classed as under ‘sustainable management’. Much of the country’s current forestry is mono-cultured evergreens that harbour little biodiversity and I fear with such a drive towards carbon trading and offsetting, we will be inadvertently driving out natural flora and fauna that would normally thrive under traditional agricultural ecosystems.

We need to see the enhancement of our existing woodlands as a greater priority than further expanding the plantations, and to consider agriculture as a valid and necessary use of land, especially when we have only a 60% self-sufficiency of food. It is also important to remember that even tree planting schemes are ‘sequestering’ or storing carbon, not getting rid of it entirely.

There is a school of thought amongst some of the fringes of social media that traditional agricultural systems of livestock grazing for meat consumption are of detriment to the local environment and wider climate – and often drives the view that a vegan diet is better for the environment.

Some people are not aware that grassland also sequesters carbon, and does it more reliably, with 97% of carbon stored in the soil. This underground bank of carbon is 150% greater in temperate grassland ecosystems than that in temperate forests. When grassland is converted to cropland as would need to happen for us all to switch to a ‘plant-based’ diet, there is a 59% decline in soil carbon stocks. Even conversion to forestry would cause a 10% drop in soil carbon stocks. This should be a sobering statistic for anyone pushing for a plant-based diet on the grounds of climate.

This is an ongoing debate, but an issue we need to fully understand. Farmers will work within their means to enhance the sustainability of their farming model. But a crucial factor of sustainability is the ability for something to continue long-term, and to be financially and practically viable well into the future. Layer upon layer of bureaucracy and red tape is not sustainable. Disincentivising farmers from producing food in favour of tree plantations is not sustainable and removing thousands of acres of land per year from agricultural production is certainly not sustainable.

This is why I am taking the opportunity during the upcoming review of ELMS (the subsidy scheme replacing the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy) to consult farmers on their views, encouraging the Government to take heed of their insights which is mostly welcome, despite those pretending to know the farmers’ best interests disagreeing.

Finally, one of the most moving experiences you can have is to participate in the Remembrance Parade in front of Sherborne Abbey at 10.30am on Remembrance Sunday and attend the service in the Abbey Church that follows. If you can attend, please do.

Specialist Andy Sagar will be in the Sherborne area on Thursday 24th November to value your objects & antiques

Entries Invited for our Winter Auctions

Silver | Vertu | Jewellery | Ceramics Pictures | Furniture | Clocks | Rugs | Militaria Coins | Medals | Collectors | Sporting

To make an appointment call or email 01460 73041 andy.sagar@lawrences.co.uk

FREE VALUATIONS ALSO AVAILABLE Online | Phone | Email | Whatsapp

Professional Valuations Available for Probate & Insurance. Complete House Contents & Attic Clearances Arranged