Blog

Our autumn meeting on Saturday 29 October proved to be the most popular we have held in ten years, save only for an even more popular evening on bats a few years ago. With 56 people crammed into the loft Read More

For a few weeks in the summer of 2011, we placed a map in the village shop to collect deer sightings, and, thanks to 30 or so contributions, we now have a map showing where deer are most often seen. Read More

The people who arrived to fuel the growth of settlements in the areas of Brockweir and Hewelsfield from around 1830 onwards would have been compelled to maximise the produce from the plots they, in most cases, ‘appropriated’ on the commons Read More

Sunday May 23rd was a beautiful, hot, sunny day, perfect weather for a relaxed walk around John Josephi’s orchard. Around two dozen people turned up to hear John start by explaining that he had inherited the land from his father, Read More

The sheep, cattle and horses in our fields have competition. Fallow deer are now common in the district and regularly emerge from cover in the woods to feed in the fields. Wild boar, having been released into the Forest of Read More

On the 4th of March, we held our meeting on field boundaries and their management with about 35 people present. We had invited two outside speakers, both of whom were none too well on the day, but came nonetheless, and Read More

Every year a few molehills appear in our fields, usually in clusters, which I’m told are due to single moles setting up runs and ‘worm-traps’. For a year or two I recorded the distribution of the clusters and found that Read More

Following our AGM on Tuesday 26 February, we held a ‘mini-symposium’ on Orchard Restoration, in which no less than seven contributors, each speaking for 5-10 minutes, gave the 40-45 people present a clear picture of the variety of interest in Read More

Last week I went to Shirenewton to talk to the local history society about meadows and traditional haymaking. It was arranged a year ago, but it turned out to be well timed, for Shirenewton village has just acquired land for Read More