Service
Arena construction
An arena is roughly four hundred tonnes of stone and sand sitting on your ground for the next twenty years. Almost everything that decides whether it is still riding well at the end of that is buried before the surface ever goes down.
What we are actually building
People buy a riding surface. What they are paying for is a drainage system with a riding surface on top of it. That distinction sounds like a technicality until the third wet winter, when the arena that was built to a price is holding water in the corners and the one built properly is being ridden on every day.
A new arena is four layers and one decision. The formation is your existing ground, dug out and graded to fall. Above that sits a drainage layer, then a compacted stone sub-base, then a geotextile membrane, then the riding surface itself. The decision is what falls where the water goes, and it has to be made before anyone turns a sod.
How the build runs
We survey the site before quoting, and we do it on foot rather than from a satellite image. Ground conditions decide more of the final cost than the size of the arena does, and we would rather find the spring, the clay band or the buried land drain at survey stage than halfway through a dig.
- Survey and levels. What the ground is, how it falls, where water currently goes and where it can legally be sent.
- Site strip and excavation. The topsoil comes off and is stockpiled or removed. The formation is cut to a designed fall, not to eye.
- Drainage. Perimeter and lateral runs, laid in stone, connected to a real outfall. This is the part nobody sees and the part everything depends on.
- Sub-base. Compacted stone in layers, each one rolled, built to a tolerance rather than a guess.
- Membrane. A geotextile separator specified to your ground, which stops the sub-base and the surface migrating into each other.
- Surface. Laid, spread and levelled, then left to settle before it is ridden.
- Fencing, gates and reinstatement, then the site left clean.
Why the ground matters more than the specification
Two arenas of identical size, ten miles apart in Kent, can differ by well over ten thousand pounds. One is on North Downs chalk, which drains freely and takes a straightforward build. The other is on Wealden clay, which holds water, moves with the seasons and needs a drainage design that genuinely moves water somewhere rather than a perimeter trench that fills up and stops.
This is why we will not give a firm price over the phone, and why our guide prices are published as bands rather than a single figure. Anyone who quotes an arena without seeing the ground is either padding the price to cover the risk or is about to discover the risk at your expense.
Access, which is the cost nobody mentions
An arena arrives on lorries. If an articulated lorry can reach the site, materials come straight in and the build is efficient. If it cannot, every tonne is transhipped by tractor and trailer or by grab, and that time appears in the price whether or not the quote breaks it out.
We survey access at the same visit as the ground, and we price it as its own line rather than hiding it in the total. If getting materials to your field is going to add several thousand pounds, you should know that before you commit, not after.
What it costs
A 20m by 40m outdoor arena on reasonable ground, including drainage, sub-base, a sand and fibre surface and post and rail fencing, sits in a published band on our pricing page. A 20m by 60m is roughly half as much again in ground, drainage and materials, and the price reflects that honestly.
We publish those bands because no one else in this market will. It is not a quote and it does not pretend to be. It is enough for you to know whether to have the conversation at all, which is the thing a website should tell you.
Who is building it
Arena construction and equestrian performance are two different disciplines. Lewis brings ground conditions, drainage, formation, materials and construction. Harriet brings thirty years in the saddle and an understanding of how footing performs beneath different horses, through different movements, workloads and conditions.
Neither half is sufficient on its own. A contractor who does not ride builds to a drawing. A rider who does not build has opinions and no drainage design. The point of this partnership is that both questions get answered by someone whose job it is.
The ride check, before we call it finished
Every arena we build is ridden before we hand it over. Not walked and measured, ridden, in both directions and over a fence where that is what the arena is for.
What comes out of it is a snagging list about how it rides rather than how it was built: depth adjusted where it needs it, the track eased where the going changes, levels corrected in the corner that is going to take the most traffic. These are small changes and they are the difference between an arena that is technically correct and one that is genuinely good to ride on.
We come back at four weeks once it has settled and been used, and again after the first winter, because a surface tells the truth in February rather than in July. Most contractors have been paid and gone long before that.
You sign off each stage before it is covered
The build runs as three client sign-offs: sub-base and drainage, base and drainage, then surface. At each one we walk the arena with you, photograph and dimension what is on the ground, and you approve it before the next layer goes over the top.
What that produces is a final report showing where every part of your drainage system is installed, measured from fixed points that will still be there in twenty years. Most builds photograph only the finished surface, which is exactly backwards, because the finished surface is the one part you can still see.