16th November
We helped Wenda and Matthew take down a Willow tree and we collected a trailer load of cuttings for Liddells.
18th November
Nick, landscape historian and fellow chorister, visited and suggested that there might have been a wood on what we call the Wetland. There are certainly tree stumps remaining. He says:
'I think that the southern boundary of the wood is the stone in my attached photo (together with a stretch of old wall below the little old Oak near the stone). If this is right, then the wood was on the north-facing slope below the stone and on the low ground visible in the back of the photo which has deep trenches running across it. The stone, the remnant of wall and the trenches all look pretty ancient to me. This makes your wood - if it still survived (there's a Scots Pine on the low ground - visible on my photo - which presumably survives from the wood) pretty old and so it may have been an ancient wood. The trenches could well have been made to enable planting on that low, badly drained ground - such an approach to planting is an 18th century method. Also a lovely line of old Beech beside the wall by the lane - these look early 19th century to me.'
(John has since measured the roadside Beeches and calculated them to be roughly 240 years old)
23rd November
Hal and Beth gave us a day's work. Beth and Clare fixed the wire netting (stitching and stapling) on the Wildflower Meadow; Hal and John fixed the netting to the posts.
In spite of the protective fortress, the ponies managed to get in and eat some of the willows. Maybe they had a headache...
The stone Nick suggests might mark the boundary of an earlier wood