Hare Hill - Drainage and drinking.

The open parkland arround the gardens at Hare Hill have a lot going on underground.

They are drained by a historic network of channels that were covered when the field boundaries were removed to create the open views.

Some of these culverts have cattle drinking places built into them, and these are being rediscovered and some brought back into use. The structures are quite clever and should provide a continuous supply of fresh running water to the cows - while keeping the cows out of the water - reducing the polution that could occur if the cows had free access to a natural watercourse - they can't wade into it and the construction should reduced the amount of mud entering the water.

On Sunday, 12 of our members and a similar group from Congleton rebuilt this one, when we arrived the culvert up to the tree had been partially cleared and rebuilt. The water flow had been diverted round the work in a temporary channel. The Congleton group rebuilt the culvert feeding the channel, patched up the side of the cahnnel and relaid the flagstones. The structure obviously had quite a history and had been built / rebuilt at various times in the past with whatever materials came to hand. We continued this tradition reusing the Flagstones, sandstone, cobbles, oak, local clay, local sand.... There may be future work to open up an explore flags peaking out from under the heap of soil on the right - but for the moment that is being left to try to get the cows to only use the left hand side of the channel. The modern trough will also stay for the moment but the extra facility should reduce the mud / errosion in the field.
In the after photograph there is still some soil to be put back over culvert in the foreground that takes the overflow.