Duddingston Community Seat

Today we visited Duddingston Kirk Glebe, in Duddingston, Edinburgh, to build a dry stone seat for them, on a similar curved design to the one we built last year at Balgreen (see posts passim). We'd originally planned to start last weekend, but due to stone delivery issues (it had been left quite some distance from the build site, meaning we'd've had to spend a large part of the day wheelbarrowing it over) the start was delayed until today.

The site is on the banks of Duddingston Loch, looking across the loch to the wildfowl reserve opposite and on to the Braid Hills beyond. And on a sunny day like today, it's very lovely indeed.

A level circular space had been cut into the hillside for the seat, saving us the challenge of building a curve into a slope. So we set to work, wheelbarrowing over the stone:

And turning it into a seat.

By lunchtime we'd got the first couple of courses up.

There's a cafe in the adjoining Millar Hall at Dr Neil's Garden, and they'd laid on lunch for us. However, we didn't realise this until Lukas returned from having his lunch there and told us, by which time the rest of us had eaten our packed lunches. However, it was apparent that we wouldn't get the seat finished in a single day, so once we'd got the seat surface provisionally on (laid on sand, temporarily until we get some mortar), we headed up to discuss our next move over tea and cake.

There's more dry stone work done by the branch up by the cafe - still standing after over a decade ...

After some discussion we decided the only useful thing we could do further today was to put on the first course at the back, as we'd need to mortar the seat level in before we could build the rest. So, refreshed, we went back and did this, and then, having tested our workmanship, headed home.

We're planning on returning in a few weeks to finish it off - here's hoping we get as nice a day as today.