Our site
Join us for a quick tour of our site.
Come on in.
Scroll down, and join us for a virtual tour of our site.
The first thing you’ll spot once you’ve opened the gate is our roundhouse at the bottom of the drive.
The roundhouse is the hub of our communal area. It’s an open-fronted building, constructed using traditional methods. It has a living roof, planted with a range of flowers.
It’s right next to the…
…firepit. Most of our garden waste is composted, but anything woody is left next to the firepit to dry out. From time to time, we have a big bonfire together. It often involves a few drinks and if we’re really lucky, Tom plays his fiddle for us.
Sometimes, we’ll light the…
…pizza oven, which is just next to the firepit. It’s beautifully built, and when it’s got a good bed of embers, can cook a pizza in minutes. You have to keep an eye on them or they’ll burn.
If anyone needs the loo after drinking by the firepit (or at any other times), we’ve got a compost toilet. There’s no flush. All the waste decomposes and can be recycled as compost.
We stack the wheelbarrows next to the compost toilet. This wouldn’t normally be especially remarkable, but one of our members – the very talented Lynda Thomas – has made this beautiful lino cut print of the wheelbarrows.
Our polytunnel is divided into 14 bays, and members who have been allocated a bay can use it for growing vegetables that need a bit more warmth than the Calderdale climate usually provides.
Next to the polytunnel are our raised beds. Members who don’t need a lot of space can rent one of these raised beds. They don’t take as much time to maintain as a full plot.
We generate a lot of garden waste, and a group of us has built a system that enables us to turn this waste into compost. When one bay is full, we cover it to leave it to rot and turn into compost, and deposit our waste into one of the other bays.
We’ve got a mooring site for one boat on the canal. Our tenants have really made it their own, and for them, Redacre is their home.
The West side of our site is where the larger slots are. Many of them have their own sheds, and are beautiful places to hang out in the sunshine.
There is a communal orchard, with a range of fruit trees dotted around the site. Along the border fence, we’ve got apple trees, pear trees and fruit bushes. Everyone is welcome to take some fruit. Any that’s left over gets turned into delicious apple juice at our annual apple day.
We’ve got an apiary at the top of the site, where we keep our bees. A specially trained and equipped team look after them, and have been known to help out locally when someone finds a swarm of bees in their garden.
Our chickens have two residences: a winter one at the top of the site, and a summer one near the canal. A team looks after them and collects the eggs. They’re laying really well this year.
Our smaller members enjoy exploring the site, and there’s a small slide and some swings, and also some small trikes and a toddler-sized wheelbarrow. So they can help out when they’re at the site.
Frogs and toads and other water-loving wildlife have got a home in our pond, which is near the roundhouse.