Crafts Hill Barn Pond – From swamp to oasis
How CHB came to be
Part Three – The Swimming Pond
In 2019, with our two B&B suites complete and my youngest at secondary school, it was crunch time for whether I could make a living from our home or needed to return to teaching. Having been lucky enough to be able to stay at home with our children when they were little, using any additional time and brain power in voluntary roles. I was now facing the prospect of going back to the classroom full time and decided if I could earn enough doing B&B I would pursue that instead.
Our attention turned to the very neglected area beyond our garden and yard and whether this could be a resource for us and guests that would make our offering a bit special.
When we’d moved in the pond was full of water and stocked with carp, a forgotten terrapin (apparently very common leftovers from the 80s teenage mutant ninja turtles craze!) and a flock of beautiful call ducks. We’d enjoyed daily visits from Mono the duck (with one wing) who tapped on the back door for his breakfast oats. The ladies we named Blondie and Blondie baby (original!) and they were stunning. After watching too many ducklings being swooped on by magpies and crows we built a protective cage around her and her eggs one spring and successfully reared a family of ducklings. A floating duckhouse was then constructed (to protect them from the foxes) and installed one fun weekend when Tim got stuck in the mud in his waders!
With the summers becoming drier and the trees getting overgrown and dropping more leaves into the water, the pond slowly filled with sludge and contained less and less water. My mum had bought us a book about swimming ponds when we moved here (it is still in Dragonfly cabin!) At that time it was a pipe dream, in fact we had asked the vendors if we could not buy that bit of land to save money! We then considered filling in the hole and turning it to more grass but the cost of that was terrifying.
Something had to be done so we asked a few swimming ponds companies to come and quote, but our jaws dropped to the floor. The 6 figure sums were most definitely not in our price range and some of the maintenance costs were also astronomical.
We are both stubborn creatures though and after chatting with the lovely Paul from a local company “Natural swimming pools” they agreed to do the dredging and shaping only, as a stand alone job. Then when funds and time allowed we would take over as a DIY project with some guidance.
In July 2019 the fabulous Bernd spent a week shifting mud and clay with his digger and dumper to shape the pond into a deep swim zone and shallower regeneration zone. He has been back a few times to see the finished project and I’m glad to say approved of our work!
Next stage required some homework so I bought an ebook on DIY swimming ponds and learnt a lot! David Pagan Butler instilled a wonderful confidence and we loved his low cost, working with nature approach. Armed with some old drainpipe, an aquarium air pump and sandbags, we created our own rudimentary filtration system.
Then there was the 5 tonnes of gravel and sand to shift to create the reed bed, which felt never ending for a while.
Finally we were ready for the exciting bits – water and plants! A local company came and drilled a borehole so we could fill and maintain the level of water and the plants could thrive. I remember my mum coming to stay and planting hundreds of plug plants into different depths as the water level slowly climbed up our wellies!
At last the big hole of mud was now full of water and we were stunned by just how quickly the wildlife found it! We instantly had whirligigs, diving water beetles, and pond skaters. Then as things warmed up we found frogspawn and then the dragonflies came!
We all will remember the spring of 2020 for different reasons, the uncertainty of our livelihoods and a feeling that things would never be the same again. There was a certain comfort that spring in watching what had been a stagnant puddle burst with fresh life.
With the incredible weather of April 2020 and our teenage children free of exams we spent a lot of time at, on or in the water. For someone who grew up at the seaside it was soul soothing to be immersed in cold water and to share that feeling of being embraced by a warm drink and home afterwards.
Wild swimming was not really a ‘thing’ back then but with swimming pools shut, people started exploring their own neighbourhoods for places to cool down and exercise (walking around the park everyday had got pretty dull!) It made us realise that staying right at the water’s edge could be a truly wonderful retreat for anyone stuck in a city.
So as we looked at the battered old bird hide hut on the side of the pond sliding slowly into the water we knew a simple cabin on its footprint could be a fantastic addition! But with no guests for months, an empty bank account and three children off school we needed to be resourceful.
Part four will cover how we conceived the gorgeous Dragonfly cabin and how my dad ended up in his pants in The Guardian!