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Short craft courses at Assington Mill have
now been running for over 4 years. We offer around 45 different subjects,
including those that are not often covered elsewhere, such as straw-bale
building, book conservation, furniture conservation, dowsing, and coracle
making. We also aim to choose topics like the badger day, and food for free,
that make use of the beautiful and unspoilt location.
The former watermill is at the centre of a small organic farm of 70 acres,
and managed as a private nature reserve. Anne Holden, who runs the courses,
says, “We have now welcomed over 1500 students, including people from
Mexico, Greenland, USA, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Germany, Italy and
Eire, and we enjoy meeting so many interesting people.”
The workshop for the courses used to be a WWII prefabricated hut, but was
replaced in 2004 by a spacious and elegant building made out of straw bales
and rendered with clay, both off the farm. It was built by about 20 people
on a course that lasted seven days, under the supervision of Barbara Jones
of Amazon Nails. Barbara advised the owner of the straw-bale house on TV’s
Grand Designs. It has a pantiled roof, large double doors at each end,
windows along the length of one wall, a toilet/wet-room and a small tea
point. Assington Brook runs along one side and the doors on the south
elevation overlook the meadows which lead to Spouses Grove nature reserve.
Lunch is homemade and included in the course fees, together with homemade
biscuits and cakes, and the food is sourced locally from Assington Farm Shop
and rarely from supermarkets.
For further information contact Anne Holden (01787) 229955,
Mob 07770 550570, email
info@assingtonmill.co.uk or visit website
www.assingtonmill.com
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