Dubstone

So, I'm on the trail of Sheepfolds. Today it was between showers.

In the village of Melmerby, not far from Penrith, there is a rebuilt sheepfold by the beck, next to the road and close to the village green. This was actually a washfold, consisting of two adjoining pens, used to hold sheep before they were washed in the beck. The rebuilding of the washfold was done by local wallers in 2002, as a millennium project. Then Andy Goldsworthy added a stone sculpture called the Dubstone.

The Dubstone is set in the beck and access is by a small wooden bridge. The Dub was a pool into which sheep were thrown to wash their fleeces before they went to market (the farmers got more money for them that way). The beck was damned with wooden planks in the bridge, which is just to the left of the picture, to create the pool.

Fred Teesdale remembered the fold in use in the 1920s: 'They dunked the sheep into t'water on their backs and they puddled them round wi a long pole. They got onto their feet again, where t'road is, and they shook theirsels dry.'

Goldsworthy placed the stone at the point where the sheep would be pushed from the fold into the water. He made it from a block of Red Sandstone, sliced into five. He carved a deep hole that tapered down through the layers of stone. When the water level of the beck is raised, water laps round the sculpture. He wanted the stone to be submerged every now and then and there is a wonderful photograph in his book of this happening, where the stone is seen lying just below the surface. He hoped that over time it would become filled with silt, possibly disappear and become part of memory, in a place already rich with memories.


What is amazing to me is that I have been to Melmerby a hundred and more times. It's not far from us. It has an excellent café (where all the cars are parked) and used to have a real bakery. It's a pretty place and is the last stop before you take the switchback, but highly scenic, road up to Alston and over to the north east. I have traced some family ancestry to this village and we have spent many a happy hour searching the churchyard for gravestones. And yet . . . in all that time I have never noticed this sheepfold and this stone. Again, it's as Goldsworthy wanted - part of the environment, making a connecting statement, but not shouting out loudly for itself.