Shy Lowen

Project – Arena Roof

During the covid lockdown we received a grant from Anne Duchess Of Westminster Trust of £5000.00 and a legacy of £10,000 which we used to purchase the materials required for an all weather manege. The covid lockdown linked with the reduction in public services we could offer allowing us the time to dedicate to build this facility. It is set against a backdrop of our wildlife belt where the tree planting of several years ago is maturing.

It has been a resounding transformational success as the 20 metre x 40 metre space had, historically, been barely useable between April and September owing to the hard summer baked clay and totally unusable owing to the knee deep heavy clay mud from October through winter to March of the following Spring. We now have no outage times caused by unsafe footing.

Current Manege Issues

We grandly call it the arena – in part because the word ‘menage’ isn’t very

compatible with our Liverpudlian accents! – so I’ll refer to it as the arena for the remainder of this report.

We are in the wet North West of England and so experience a lot of rain throughout the year. This upsets some of our human clients who are with us for our horses ‘paying it forward’ work supporting ethical horse riding, mental health therapy and alternative curriculum education. During the winter months the driving rain also upsets the horses undergoing their own rehabilitation as well as when they are assisting humans.

The summers of 2024, 2025 and 2026 have also brought high temperatures with the arena becoming something of a sun trap. This has resulted in some difficulties with the sun intensity and heat in that area.

Solution Project

Our land is leased, currently 25 years extending to 99 years. We aim to own the site at some future date when we can persuade the local authority to sell it to us but, we currently have guaranteed 25 years security. In the meantime all infrastructure is built as temporary buildings in the event that we ever need to move them as we are not prepared to lose any of the infrastructure.

The arena will benefit from having an open sided roof to alleviate the weather issues being experienced. The design of this is based upon the sports halls built around the country to provide community facilities and football academies. Our version is open sided and roofed to the eaves. A number of temporary building suppliers were contacted for a solution and Kit Buildings, Tilbury, Essex provided the best bespoke option and quote.

Budget and Costings

The ‘manpower’ and building knowledge to put the structure together is supplied by our volunteer workforce which includes military veterans with surveying and structural engineering capabilities which means that there are no labour costs involved. We have always built everything ourselves. We own all our own machinery which, although very old, includes a JCB, a mini excavator, a dumper and a tractor so there is no machinery hire.

Concrete Pad Foundations 16 cubic metres £2840.00

30mm Steel threaded rod x 48 metres £735.00

30mm nuts and washers £460.00

Kit Building 40m x 20m Height: 6m Double Truss

Galvanised Steel Frame PVC 610g /m2 - Roof only (down to eaves)

£39,902.00

Building delivery cost £360.00

Total cost estimate £44,297.00