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Countryman
Diary - May 2008
The poor harvest last year, coupled with a trend away from planting
of traditional long-stemmed winter wheat for more profitable short-stemmed
varieties, has led to a chronic shortage of thatching straw. The
National Society of Master Thatchers (NSMT) have warned that there
is not even enough stocks to repair existing thatched-roof homes,
and prices for the raw materials have rocketed.
English Heritage, which insists on traditional long-stemmed straw
being used on all listed buildings, suggests that thatchers should
concentrate on repairing rather replacing whole roofs, using remaining
supplies of traditional straw. Marjorie Sanders, chief executive
of the NSMT, says: “Some councils are victimising thatchers.
It is vital that conservation officers understand how serious the
situation is and allow more flexibility in the variety of straw
that can be used.”
Bob West, one of the country’s biggest growers of thatch
straw, warns: “It is entirely possible that in the next ten
years, long-stemmed wheat will no longer be available because it
is less profitable than other varieties. Then, straw thatching
as we know it will disappear.”
What a shame if this was to happen; our countryside heritage is
at stake here and it seems incredible that some kind of comprimise
solution can’t be found.
It’s the little things
The preservation of our rural heritage is also
to the fore in Yorkshire where the Dales National Park Authority
is taking steps to make sure some of the area’s smaller
buildings and agricultural constructions are being recorded for
posterity.
Detailed records of nearly 29,000 bigger items – like old
houses, barns and lime kilns – already exist in the shape
of an Historic Environment Record (HER) that has been compiled
by experts at the authority. But now, archaeology staff and volunteers
have started logging all the less noticeable features so they can
be added to the HER. And the first batch of additions has just
been turned into a series of pages on the authority’s
website called Feature of the Season.
Miles Johnson, the authority’s Countryside Archaeological
Advisor, told me: “Many of the features were part of the
everyday farming landscape but none has been recorded before. They
all add to the special character of the National Park and the main
reason for putting them on the website is to make them more accessible
to people who may want to learn more about them and may be interested
in understanding the Dales landscape in more detail.”
So far the Dales Volunteers have logged fifty stock underpasses – passages
beneath walled roads and tracks that enabled cattle and sheep to
pass from one field to another, normally to get to water – as
well as nearly a hundred churn stands, hennery piggeries (combined
henhouses and piggeries) and turbary stones that marked areas where
people could cut peat.
Stone water troughs, polegate posts, dovecotes and millstones
will also be on a growing list of other features that will be put
under the spotlight as the project continues.
Miles added: “Revisiting some of the features already recorded
has shown that there are serious threats facing some of them. For
example, one of the churn stands recently disappeared when a farm
track was widened and one of the buildings is threatened with demolition
in the near future while others are showing sign of structural
decay.”
The Feature of the Season project along with datasheets and images
of the features can be seen online at www.yorkshiredales.org.uk/fos.
Or telephone 08701 666333 for details.
Spying on the neighbours
The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) is looking for people
to spy on their neighbours… to provide intimate details
of what blue tits and great tits across the UK are up to in the
privacy of their own homes. Dave Leech of the BTO wants to know
whether gardens have replaced woodlands as the best places to
raise broods of young tits. Are city slickers out-competing their
country cousins?
While these species, and the robin, are commonly referred to as ‘garden
birds’ , they are traditionally woodland species that have
increasingly taken advantage of the green spaces in areas of human
habitation, but just how successful are these city dwellers? As
more of the British countryside is developed to meet human demands,
this question is becoming increasingly important and the data collected
by Nest Box Challenge will help to answer it.
Each participant in Nest Box Challenge is asked to record whether
or not their nest box is used during the season and, where possible,
the number of eggs and chicks that are produced by the birds nesting
in it. For more details visit www.bto.org or write to: BTO, The
Nunnery, Thetford, Norfolk IP24 2PU. Tel: 01842
750050.
Paul Jackson |
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