Beam one

Which is perhaps overdoing it a bit. Rather a fence post found recovered from under a hedge in Ridgeway, on the way back from Epsom Station. 

At the time of recovery, apart from being a bit dirty, it had looked reasonably sound - I just needed to chop the bottom few inches off where a bit of rot had set in. However, when I got around to chopping the next day, or perhaps the day after that, it turned out that the rot had crept along inside, getting along for half way along what had been a six foot post.

The lumps have now been lost under a bush at the bottom of the garden, to provide food and shelter for miscellaneous bugs, while what is left of the post has been added to the stack of useful timber in the garage. Hopefully no longer infectious.

I suppose that this rotting from the inside is more or less what standing trees do when they get old. The outer layers are still alive, are still carrying grub and water up and down the trunk, while the core gets eaten away.

PS: I have been assuming that the post rotted from what was bottom, when it was part of a fence. But maybe it was the square-cut, exposed top soaking up the rain water? Perhaps the better fencing contractors cut the tops of their posts at an angle and put little roofs on them for this very reason.