Yes

I'm afraid it’s another Sheepfold!

We decided to go in search of one of the last of the Andy Goldsworthy Sheepfolds. This one is called Jack’s Fold and is in Barbondale, near Barbon, Kirkby Lonsdale. Much easier to locate than yesterday’s, but it took us onto a delightful fell side road that we didn’t know existed.

The history of this one is interesting, as it spent some time in a gallery in St Albans. Originally Goldsworthy planned to build a sheepfold entering a building in Carlisle at a spot at the Civic Centre where, according to old maps, a fold once stood. The idea was that the fold would be built to be apparently through the walls of the new building and covering the area of the original fold.

This did not happen - surprise, surprise - Carlisle is always wary of anything ‘a bit strange’!

But it did happen in the Margaret Harvey Gallery in St Albans, Hertfordshire. Cumbrian walling stone was taken down and Jack’s Fold was made. It’s quite hard to describe and I have failed to find a picture on the internet, but there are photographs in the Goldsworthy ‘Enclosures’ book. If you can imagine half of the fold built inside against a glass wall and half outside, so that from any angle it looks to go through the wall. It was exhibited at the gallery for a few months during 1996.

Then it was dismantled, the stone taken back to Cumbria and it was remade in its present position on Barbon Fell. It was named Jack’s Fold in memory of the father of one of the wallers involved in its construction.

The woodland on the fell side has that wonderful spring haze about it, when you know buds are opening and tree flowers appearing.