life's a beach

Our plot now looks like a cross between an archaeological excavation and WW1 trenches with two circular excavations about a metre deep, one 9m diameter and one 12m, corresponding to the two roundhouse perimeters. Last week we spent a day with Ian and his mini-digger. He screefed off the topsoil and it is piled up out of the way, but the subsoil is quite rich loam in places. Beneath the soil there is a beach.

This is probably abut 8-10,000 years old and was made after the last glaciation. Most of Scotland has risen a good few metres since then due to isostatic readjustment (I knew that Geography degree would come in useful one day). This is the land rising slowly after the weight of ice was taken off it, when it melted. The land is still rising here and this might counteract the effects of sea level rise due to global warming a wee bit, over the next few hundred years. Beneath the small roundhouse is a sandy area - lovely white sand, and beneath the larger roundhouse beach pebbles. We haven’t found any shells yet. There are some large storm beach boulders, probably originally of glacial origin, and these will be used for a stone revetment retaining the driveway and in our rock garden. The pebbly subsoil will be screened (by hand !) and the pebbles used as the drainage layer fringing the turf roofs. We also put in the top drain and screefed off the shed site. Yes, we did hit the water table and the trenches have ponded up in places. The top drain should sort this out and take ground water off the actual buildings’ footprints. Now it is down to Martin to specify the foundations.