Over the past two months, work has continued on the physical as well as the historical reconstruction of the Merz Barn and Cylinders Estate. In early April, Ferdinand Saumarez Smith (Director of Factum Foundation London) visited the artist Stephen Buckley in St Leonard’s to hear his recollections of visiting the Merz Barn with Joe Tilson in 1963 (prior to the removal of the wall), whilst he was a student of Richard Hamilton at Newcastle. Buckley also reminisced about having had dinner with Hamilton and that other great prophet of postwar contemporary art Marcel Duchamp at the Good Friends Chinese restaurant in Salmon Lane, Limehouse.

A lesser known member of the Cylinders constellation was Gwyneth Alban Davis, who lived in a caravan at the Langdale Estate and was printing under the name of the Caravan Press in the Shippon whilst Schwitters was sculpting the Merz Barn relief. Tracy Hill and Heather Mullender-Ross of the University of Central Lancashire co-curated the exhibition ‘Women in Print: The Caravan Press’ (until 3rd November 2025) at Allan Bank in Grasmere.

Grizedale Arts, our collaborator in the Lake District, is the 2025 winner of the Ampersand Foundation Award. Adam Sutherland and his team fully deserve this honour! We congratulate them and celebrate with them. Part of the prize money will be spent on establishing a working print studio at Cylinders in the Shippon.

In terms of physical reconstruction, Factum’s carpenter Tom Don installed restored windows in the Shippon in May. He continued lime plastering areas where cement render was removed. At the same time, a team of volunteers supervised by Grizedale Arts valiantly battled the brambles with a strimmer and hedge cutters. Mike Hodgson, a local builder, is about to begin the renovation of the near-collapsed roof of the lean-to extension to the Shippon. Mike Edmondson, who farms in Langdale, will be removing the concrete floor of the ‘milking’ section of the Shippon.