Thatch a Roundhouse!

Aim

The Thatch a Roundhouse Project aims to create a richer learning experience by thatching the latest of five new Iron Age Roundhouses.

Aim

The Thatch a Roundhouse Project aims to create a richer learning experience by thatching the latest of five new Iron Age Roundhouses at Celtic Harmony Camp, creating the UK’s biggest Iron Age settlement and enabling an additional 4,000 more children, families and community groups of all abilities to benefit from Celtic Harmony experience each year.

Who we are:

Celtic Harmony Camp is a place for everyone:

• A place to learn about our ancient past.
• A place where families come to relax and spend quality time together.
• A place where young people of all abilities can learn new skills through volunteering and apprenticeships.
• A place where children with learning disabilities gain new confidence to take forward into their daily lives.

Last year, 11,000 visitors came from Hertfordshire and other parts of the Eastern region of England, including all the home counties and London.

Celtic Harmony aims to increase understanding of the natural world and create a more sustainable way of life for future generations. We achieve this through the Celtic Harmony experience, which enables people of all abilities to step into Ancient Britain and experience life from the Stone Age to the Iron Age, via a programme of multi-sensory creative activities.

Visitors experience hands-on how people living over 2000 years ago made food, clothes and shelter by harvesting natural materials available in their local environment. They grind grain into flour, bake bread, weave cloth, dye wool using herbs from the garden, and see for themselves how the houses were built using wattle and daub and thatch. The new National Curriculum topic ‘Changes from Stone Age to Iron Age in Britain’ has created a need for a deeper understanding of how primitive technologies evolved over 800,000 years of prehistory to enable our ancestors to adapt and work with the natural environment.

The Project

We have dug deep into the charity’s reserves and our local volunteers with a range of abilities, work placement students, local crafts people and Celtic Harmony team lead by Luca Parrella, Heritage Director, have built five new roundhouses to create a richer learning experience, like stepping into an ancient village.

The five new roundhouses are 6m in diameter, built with chestnut timber, hazel for wattle, daubed with clay, and thatched with reed, using archaeological reports as a guide.

With your help we hope to raise £7,350 to thatch the last round house and become the largest reconstructed Iron Age settlement in the UK, enabling an additional 4,000 children, young people, families and the local community to benefit from the Celtic Harmony Experience!

The houses will be specially decorated and furnished with tools and household goods specifically to represent dwellings from different eras of Prehistory. There will be space for experimental archaeology projects like pottery and bronze casting, all brought to life by our costumed team.

Rewards

Celtic Harmony's ethos is based on the principle of “I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand.” With that in mind, many of the rewards we are offering are an opportunity to come and experience Celtic Harmony Camp and even sleepout in one of the new roundhouses! If you have never been to Celtic Harmony Camp before, we hope you will come and join us. If you are an old friend, thank you for your continued support. All pledged rewards can be claimed in the spring/summer of 2017

We Need Your Support

Help us make a legacy for future generations to learn ‘hands-on' from the past. We need your help now to make a more sustainable future.  Please pledge today and watch as the roundhouse gets thatched!

This project closed unsuccessfully on 24th November 2016