At the one end of the property is a lean-to. It houses an old store-room and three outside toilets – one for each of the cottages. Since numbers 9 and 10 were knocked together in the mid 1970’s, I can only assume that these toilets went out of use around then. Both of the remaining properties had inside bathrooms from this point.
We removed the stone slates from the roof when we re-roofed the outbuildings back in March (was it really that long ago?).
It is a single skin building constructed using sandstone blocks. These are now very weathered as is the mortar that holds them together. It is a fairly easy (if not time-consuming) job to take it apart – block by block – cleaning off the old mortar as I go. The stones are then put onto the pickup and stacked at the edge of the top field. I am not sure what we are going to do with this stone, but there is a small wall to be built as part of the garden. The stone is very soft and I suspect that it is only really usable in a garden wall.
The rain arrives about 2pm. I work on for a couple of hours and yesterday’s sunhat keeps off the rain today. There is probably a couple of more days here to completely demolish the lean-to and move all of the debris.
Still, not bad for day 1.
By standing on the back of the pickup it is possible to reach the top of the wall. The mortar is very weathered and it only takes a gentle tap to loosen each of the stones.
The lean-to is taken down stone-by-stone. Each of the stone is cleaned and then stacked in the back of the pickup.
The room with the blue barrel looks like it was used as a store room. There are three old toilet cubicles on the right. I suspect that these haven’t been used since the 1970’s. Most recently, it looks as if they have been used to store coal.
Rain stopped play about 4pm, but the lean-to is half demolished.