Gate Widening near Chyvarloe

If a job's worth doing - it's worth doing well....

The Problem:
A tenant farmer on the Gunwalloe/Chyvarloe Estate needed to access a field with a tractor in order to flail the hedges in the field margins. The gates were too small to allow him access as they had been built over 100 years ago. The gate posts were made of quarried granite which is in the traditional Cornish style.


The Solution:

Firstly, blackthorn scrub was cleared from the gateway with a brushcutter and a small section of Cornish hedge adjacent to the granite gate post to be moved was dismantled. The gatepost was dug out with a digging bar and then lifted with a strop attached to the front-loader of a tractor. The old hole was filled in and the soil compacted before measuring out the required gateway width and relocating the hole with a line in order to ensure the correct alignment of the gate relative to the track.

The granite was placed into the new post hole with the tractor once it had been checked for the correct depth. It was guided into position using line and a bubble level to make sure that it was vertical and that its face was aligned with that of its counterpart. Rock and soil was compacted around the post with a digging bar to hold it in position as the hole was filled equally and gradually.

Once the post was securely in place, the gate was resized to the required width by extending the rails with mortice and tenon jointing. Hinge pins then needed to be located on the posts by holding the gate against the posts. The holes were then drilled with a DeWalt industrial hammer drill run off a generator to provide the required power to hammer through granite. The hinge pins were knocked into place and secured with epoxy resin.

The gate was secured to the post with a locked chain and the latch was was secured to the gate with a fencing staple to deter theft of vandalism.



The adjacent section of Cornish hedge was restored and a small section of post and rail was installed to make it stock proof.


The gate now opens onto the track, blocking the thoroughfare when fully open and can remain in this position. This is useful for herding cattle into the field when coming up the track.

A Tale of Two Granites...

Two Fridays ago I was assigned to install the granite supports for a new bench by a path overlooking the lake on the estate.
Post holes were dug painstakingly in the stoney soil with iron digging bars. Shale and sandstone made hard work of just 2ft. Removal of rubble was made easier by a shove-holer.



Hardly the Collossi of Memnon; but fit for purpose and ready for the sweet chestnut seat. Each post was lowered into place using rope and checked with a level for horizontal and vertical alignment. A plank was placed against the face of the first post to help with the alignment of the second. Soil and rubble was packed down around the posts using the digging bar to hold them in place.


A brief siesta on the lakeshore was a good time to reflect on the week's work.







Granite is a traditional building material you will find used throughout the county for houses, flooring, worktops, Cornish hedges, walls, gate posts, gravestones, monuments and other ancillary structures.

Granite is a widely occuring medium to course grained igneous rock which is nearly always massive, hard and tough, and for this reason it has gained widespread use as a construction stone. Outcrops of granite tend to form tors, rounded massifs, and terrains of rounded boulders cropping out of flat, sandy soils.

Cornish granite - sourced from quarries like those in Bodmin and Longdowns near Falmouth - is softer than Scottish granite or Cumbrian shap granite. The upland spine of Cornwall consists of a series of granite intrusions. From east to west, and with descending altitude, these are Bodmin Moor, the area north of St Austell, the area around Camborne, and the Penwith or Land's End peninsula. These intrusions are the central part of the granite outcrops of south-west England, which include Dartmoor to the east in Devon and the Isles of Scilly to the west, the latter now being partially submerged.

A drawback of living in an area with granite bedrock can be the possible presence of radon. Radon is a natural radioactive gas found in the earth. You can't see or smell it, and outdoors it rarely accumulates to significant levels. But when levels do build up, especially inside buildings, it can cause health problems. Studies in the US and UK suggest that indoor radon exposure is the second leading cause of lung cancer deaths after smoking. Radon in the water supply has been linked to intestinal cancers.

Radon is released when uranium radioactively decays into lead. It moves through cracks and fissures within the subsoil into the atmosphere or spaces under and in dwellings. Soils containing high levels of uranium include granite, which explains why Cornwall is often affected. But uranium also occurs Derbyshire limestone, Northamptonshire ironstone and in the red sanstone of Somerset.

The Building Research Establishment website contains some comprehensive advice regarding the hazards, and precautions associated with a radon risk. The Health Protection Agency is also an excellent resource for all that house buyers or home owners might need to know about radon risks.