I first empathised with stone-age man when I designed and built my own house by the Thames in the 1980s. The satisfaction of protecting your family from the elements by putting a roof over their heads with your own hands cannot be beaten.
Obviously, the chance to volunteer with Jersey Heritage to help a team build a replica neolithic longhouse was too good to miss.
We spend about one week each month at La Hougue Bie – a tranquil site with a 6,000-year-old burial chamber under a mound. We use sound historical and archaeological evidence to try and replicate methods employed by neolithic people. It’s amazing how a sharpened cow’s bone can cut a groove one inch deep in solid oak timber almost as quickly as a steel chisel can. Team members have used stinging nettles to make ropes and cloth, and I have bent a willow stick around my finger to bind rafters together with a rose knot – so many ancient technologies are forgotten.
Talking of which, a fellow volunteer – knowing I was a non-drinker – introduced me to the Jersey Heritage cider-makers. For two days a year, we carry and crush apples, press the pulp and ferment rough cider in the traditional way at La Faîs’sie d’Cidre, an event that takes place annually at Hamptonne Country Life Museum.
