Projects

College Lake Visitor Centre

The rammed chalk walls at College Lake is another in a string of visitor centres we have been involved with, this one for the Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust. It was built be the main contractor, Edgar Taylor, with three days input from Ram Cast.
Although the site is in the chalk area it was decided the material for the walls should ber imported from a local quarry to ensure colour and supply were uniform and reliable.
The earth build consisted of three curved sections and three straight sections with a flint detail.

The build team reported first the hard work, second the speed of build and third the satisfaction of ‘creating something from nothing’.

Chalk is a very interesting to build with in a number of ways. But one aspect is clear, it takes longer for a chalk wall to dry than a wall which has clay as the binder. This is due to the particle size of chalk, much smaller than clay. It is also that chalk is entirely made from that particle size, and so holds moisture even in its hard stone-like particles, where a clay soil typically contains stones and sand which are impervious.

This property of chalk leads to the green algae growth which shows on the later build images but will dry and be brushed off easily once the walls have dried.