Discover the story behind a new oak bench that has been placed at the Slindon Estate

Transcript

00:00This bench is made entirely from wood from Slyndon Estate, the legs, the two legs of

00:20the bench are made from a piece of oak that me and my boy Justin went to the woods and

00:28found this oak tree that can follow those naturally and we found the water bottle with

00:34a nice fork in it because we use our sawmill to cut this fork a bit in half and then each

00:45fork makes the legs of the bench. So we found this perfect piece, we winched it out ourselves

00:53with chainsaws and our tractor's winch, took it back to the yard, cut it in half and then

01:01the back and the seat are also made out of oak that came from a similar area to where

01:08the legs came. Again, we built this out ourselves. I spent a couple of days sanding the back

01:18and the seat down so they were nice and comfortable to sit on. I rounded off the edges just to

01:25make that nice and flat as well. And then I spent another bit of time writing with a

01:34torch and dremel this message in the back of the bench for Julie's parents. So yeah,

01:42it was really a labour of love but incredibly satisfying to make and the result is, yeah,

01:47I think, pretty good.

01:52I feel extremely privileged to be sitting here today with the finished product of this

01:56wonderful commemorative bench which is here to commemorate my late parents and the reason

02:02it's right here in the beautiful South Downs Park is because I've spent years walking with

02:09my mum and dad and my twin brother enjoying the views of nature. I've been working as

02:14a Forest School leader and really that sparked my motivation to get on and get this project

02:22completed. It's taken a fair few months to do in collaboration with the National Trust

02:29leaders here and it's been extremely rewarding. So thank you so much to the Swindon team.