For those of you who’ve visited us this summer, you might have noticed some works being carried out on the old Lodge. The estates team and several contractors have been busy restoring and renewing ready to welcome our new tenants.
The work our team do throughout the year is of huge value to the estate and we don’t know what we’d do without them. There are thirty residential properties to maintain and plenty of commercial buildings too including the farm shop and meat production plant. Robert Slawski and Piotr Sarnowski started to work on the estate fifteen years ago, Piotr having led a team who built a new church in Poland before they brought their skills here. Hefin Agotz joined the team as an apprentice nearly ten years ago adding more and more to his skill set as the years have gone by becoming our third source of expertise. Works are organised by Emma Story who joined in 2015, and Alice Watkiss who joined in May last year and soon became an integral part of the team.
Janice Dale, our in-house historian, tells us that the Lodge came after the grand gates and would have been built in the 1870s when it was fashionable to have Lodges built to service large houses. We are now edging closer to completion and look forward to seeing it restored to its former glory and lived in again.
An old photograph of the Lodge found in the archives
Main picture: Emma, Rob, Piotr, Alice and Hefin outside the re-instated door to the garden before work starts on the walls.
Organic Beef