![]() We can finish our English Oak joinery in a marine oil, or a paint finish using Tikkurila primers and Valtti Opaque top coat. A hut in Hurdlemaker Green makes me very happy too. He was one of the happiest and most contented people I have ever known, so wise too, and I will always remember him and his daily marmite and watercress sandwiches working steadily in a sheltered clearing in the hazel coppice nearby. Our Favourite Hut Colour?Ī personal favourite of mine is Hurdlemaker Green which is fondly named in honour of an old hurdle maker friend of ours. Wistman’s Blue is redolent of the lichens that drape from the stunted ancient oaks growing steadfastly between granite boulders high up on Dartmoor. I set the brief of ‘relaxing, nature inspired’ and the result is so pleasing, with cosy names like Wood Sage and Guelder Rose sitting alongside evocative Coppice Smoke and Feather Moss. We selected the colours and laid them out on cards and several of us spent the weekend thinking of names to match. Our customers have great taste, and we were able to compile a range of colours for inside and out that have proved popular, alongside some that are a little more adventurous. Cabin hut painted in Hurdlemaker Green Modern Shepherd’s Hut Colours We finally settled on just the right dark bronzy green, developed with our paint suppliers Tikkurila. In the early days we would use a classic Mid-Brunswick Green, an engineering / canal boat colour, but we never quite felt it worked to suggest that faded, aged pitch look we were looking for. After time and a good weather beating pitched metal greens up beautifully, and it is this deep dark green / black that really floats my boat. So if you are looking for the original colours then a black, or an off-black is a good starting point Plankbridge Green or Ivy Berry from our colour card would work well. It’s also known as pitch, and you can imagine the farm hand being told to go out and pitch everything with a bucket and brush. Blackjack, or bitumen, is derived from petroleum and forms a tar like protective layer to metal. Back then a lad or farm hand would be sent out to ‘blackjack’ the hut, and anything else that needed it whilst he was at it. Galvanising protects the steel or iron beneath, but in time it would fade, tinged with rust and in need of a coat of paint. ![]() ![]() It would have gleamed in the sun like a spaceship in a 1950’s B movie as it stood proudly on the downs. I find it fascinating that we have this perception of something metal being rusty and aged in the black and white past, but a newly crafted corrugated iron shepherd’s hut, fresh from the makers such a Farris of Shaftesbury or Reeves of Bratton, could have been a shiny silver colour. By 1850 thousands of tonnes of steel and iron was being coated with molten zinc to give protection from rust. Original corrugated iron was galvanised, a process that was invented in France the 1830’s. The Plankbridge colour card Traditional Shepherd’s Hut Colours I’m still personally keen to keep ‘one foot in the past’ so for me the more grounded colours hark back to the golden age. However we have fully embraced the contemporary trend for larger portable shepherd’s huts. The Plankbridge ethos is still rooted in the heritage of the original Victorian huts. “The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most” John Ruskin The really tricky bit is choosing the names. What colour should a shepherd’s hut be? Well, I suppose the answer is ‘whatever you would like it to be.’ To help narrow the choice down we had great fun creating our very own nature inspired colour card, carefully selecting shades that we knew worked well or had proved popular over the years.
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