DAVID CRAIG

On a late-winter day, Andy Goldsworthy, Dick Capel of the East Cumbria Countryside Project, and I go out to look for sheepfold sites. We drive steeply north from Brough on the Middleton-in-Teesdale road between dark-brown moors with fringes of raincloud trailing across them. On the eastern slope of Helbeck Fell, at Dead Man Ghyll, we park beside the bridge and walk down the track to the remains of a double fold. One chamber will be made up again as a pen, the other will house sculptures set into the north wall: little 'ladders' of throughs with a shingle stone set into each gap between them. Partially unsighted or sightless people will be able to feel them, and the track will be surfaced to take wheelchairs. Dick has to ensure that all the parties involved in siting a fold are in agreement and clear about their responsibilities to both folds and artworks, and that no unforeseen legal problems arise. However, there's no land-ownership problem here – it's a registered common and both the commoners and the Lord of the Manor are happy with the project.

Back down to the lowland to Warcop, on the bank of a beck that joins the Eden nearby. Dick felt sure there must have been a pinfold here – for impounded strays – and it turns up on the early large-scale Ordnance Survey map. Michael Gegson, local shopkeeper and historian, confirms its use early in the 20th century. The foundations are just visible on disused level ground. The Parish Council are keen, so Andy and Steve Allen will build a new fold of the same soft red sandstone as the 17th and 18th century farm and garden walls nearby. The same glowing stone will make the roadside cone in a fold at Bolton, west of Appleby.

After Andy's lecture about the project at Kirkby Stephen, a couple called Reeves come up and offer a site on their land at Bowber Head. Two back roads join here and in the neuk of the fork is an unusual triangular fold. Near its centre is the sawn stump of a tree about fifteen inches across, hawthorn probably, and pending legal agreements which ensure the longer-term protection of the site, Andy will plant a tree in the rebuilt fold.

Another couple, the Cravens, have also offered a site, next to their house in Little Asby, six miles east of Orton. The village is unaltered 17th-century, isolated down a dead-end because it was founded as a leper colony. The old fold had been a mess of nettles. When Caroline was clearing it, she found that its floor was mother-rock, a great plate of limestone. This feels like the classic site for a fold. The hooves of the animals will have rattled on one of the foundation- stones of Cumbria.