Gathering Moss

The following article was published in the English Heritage Communities Newsletter, and was written by Ian Davies, one of our Wall Roman Site volunteers.

The image above reads:

What do you do when you have a site that is suffering damage from years of unchecked moss growth? The answer is simple: you train a bunch of willing volunteers to tackle the problem themselves.

That’s what Ginny Slade, then Territory Volunteer Manager, Free Sites West, did almost two years ago at Wall (Letocetum). It started with supervised sessions, to teach us how to remove moss and plants without damaging the walls – no sharp metal tools, nothing too abrasive and a ‘softly, softly’ approach. That done, we could carry on by ourselves.

We now have a regular routine of two cleaning sessions per month, and around half a dozen volunteers turn up to each session. Protecting the site may be the purpose for what we do, but there’s also something very therapeutic about working steadily along a piece of mossy wall, then standing back and seeing it clean and well-defined again. People work in their own way, some chatting as they clean near each other, others preferring to work alone with their thoughts.

It’s a great way for volunteers who are seldom rostered together to get to know each other. We feel like a team, a feeling reinforced when people turn up despite bad weather. In many ways, it’s more like a social event than work.

We’re also learning more about the site, even discovering features we hadn’t noticed before (what are those drainage holes in the walls? Will we ever know?). There are plenty of walls still to clean and more to learn. Moss being moss, it’s a never-ending task, but do you know what? That’s fine by us.