THE SAWPIT
On the grass opposite the churchyard wall by
the road into Woodbury Park there used to be a saw pit. It belonged to the Lord of the Manor who
lived at Everton House. Here any fallen
down trees or specifically cut for timber hauled by carthorses using chains.
They were positioned lengthways over the pit to allow long slices to be cut
from the trunks. These were then piled up and seasoned until they were ready
for sale. It took two men ten hours to saw through the length of a medium-sized
tree. Using a double handed long saw one man stood in the bottom of the pit and
pulled down, the other stood on top of the tree trunk and pulled up. At the
beginning of this century they were paid 3/6d (£0.17) a foot. When the pit fell
into disuse it was used as a dump for garden rubbish and gradually filled in. A
sweet smelling lime tree now stands by it. Just inside the gate to the park
there once stood a thatched cottage which was the gatehouse to the Hall. (Hilda
Brooker’s notes)