The latest goings-on at the Wallington carbon footprint project.

Research

On the research front PhD student Madeleine Bell from Durham University has been busy. She has collected and analysed an amazing 700 soil samples from the Wallington Estate and has discovered that our soils contain 1,205,184 tonnes of carbon! To put this into context it’s the equivalent of the CO2 emissions of all the people in Newcastle and Gateshead combined.

The challenge now for Madeleine is to try and work out the impact that we have on the carbon through the way we use the land. The results of this research could shape farming practice in the future.

The project featured on Channel 4 news in December as part of their coverage of the government Climate Committee's report on carbon budgets. Channel 4 highlighted howgood land management should be part of our response to climate change.

Community

The community at Wallington is made up of 14 farms and 80 households. The buildings are 18th century and as such are not very energy efficient. We are trialling some different options to find out what works best in these old buildings.

So far we have:

• fitted six homes out with secondary glazing
• installed a silicone-based draught proofing product in three homes
• insulated all the farm buildings
• surveyed all the cottages to upgrade their insulation

The Village Hall is quite draughty and our thermal images showed us that a lot of heat is being lost through the roof and windows so a local firm is doing an energy audit to find ways of making it warmer and more energy efficient.

Over the Summer we transformed the Estate Room at Wallington with the help of Newcastle design company ‘Guerilla’ and funding from the Trust’s partnership with npower. The new display was unveiled at our ‘Go Green with Wallington’ event by Patricia Jennings who has lived in the house at Wallington for 92 years. The display shows visitors just how big and varied the estate is and keeps them up to date with the latest developments on the Carbon Footprint Project and what’s happening at Wallington.