Guest blog: How we helped to build a straw house

Fiona Wynne, Stewardship Manager at The Crown Estate, offers an insight into a day in the life of a volunteer on site during the construction of The Lookout.

Huge thanks to the team at RSPB Conwy for letting us loose on The LookOut! The Crown Estate team had a fantastic day and didn’t want to leave.

Over the years we have been able to watch the reserve grow under the careful management of the team at Conwy. The entire reserve is on The Crown Estate foreshore and since 1991 we have leased it to the RSPB specifically so they can manage the land for conservation, environmental management and public recreation. As part of this working relationship we have also provided funds for specific projects on the reserve through our marine stewardship fund.

This year we have provided £62,000 to enable the development of The LookOut, a great example of the sorts of projects we provide funding for. Not only will the new facility create the perfect spot for staff and volunteers to raise awareness of local marine and estuarine issues and highlight the diverse flora and fauna that can be found around the reserve, but its innovative, sustainable design is sure to provide a long-lasting legacy for the reserve.

When reserve manager, Julian, first told us of the RSPB’s plans to improve the visitor facilities at RSPB Conwy, we were fascinated with the idea of building the observatory out of straw bales. And given that The Crown Estate includes large areas of rural land, we were sure we must be able to help in sourcing the straw…

Fast forward a few months, and the straw had been delivered to site courtesy of a tenant farmer on our Tabley Estate in Cheshire, and has taken on an unlikely new lease of life as part of The LookOut. Thanks to a lot of hard work by staff and volunteers, the external lime rendering was complete by the time a team of volunteers from The Crown Estate arrived on site earlier this month to take on the task of rendering the internal walls with clay.

Apparently there’s a knack to it; get it wrong and the clay ends up on the floor rather than the wall, and not intentionally either. We were suitably alarmed – none of us wanted to be the first to have this happen to us, especially given that we were among colleagues (with one honorary addition for the day) so the humiliation was likely to last forever in the office. Maximum concentration followed, so much so that at one point Laura (who is doing a fantastic job of managing the whole project) commented that we were the quietest group she’d worked with!

One of the aims of The LookOut is to increase the connection between people and wildlife, so it is fitting that staff and volunteers are having a hands-on role in building it. It was hugely rewarding for us to have the opportunity to help build such a unique structure and a great chance for us to get out of the office and get involved in the project first hand.

So with dreams of building our own straw houses, we sadly left the reserve bound for the train home, happy in the knowledge that we had put in a day’s hard work to help make The LookOut a reality, but perhaps a little upset that we couldn’t stay on a bit longer to finish the job. We are all really looking forward to seeing it all finished in August and wish the team the best of luck over the next few weeks!