Government Blue Print supports Holton Pits campaign

The Government "blueprint" released today - January 2023 - called The Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP) 2023 includes: Creating and restoring at least 2,000 square miles of new wildlife habitats Ensuring everyone in England lives within a 15-minute walk of woodlands, wetlands, parks and rivers It covers how government will: Create and restore at least 500,000…

Coppice 2023

A week after the PM, it is such a pleasure to be in the wood for a day. Just Paul Jim and I, with Jo unexpectedly joining us for a while. I was slow, but we almost reached the northern boundary. Too many large dead ask, birch, and elm and large old coppice maple to…

The Holton Heritage

Thanks to Cheryl and the detectorists, here is a catalogue of what people found on one days dig across the land adjacent to Holton Pits. So much evidence of Roman, through to Tudor. Unsurprisingly a few WWW2 tags were found, identified immediately, and where possible returned to their American family. There were plenty of hammered…

Planting more hedge

Our second Warm Room Thursday, found us planting the last of the hedge, after finding the bare root saplings I'd forgotten I'd healed into the field. Only the oaks had been nibbled, a lesson to learn. Sam, who was once locked down in the wood and is now an activist for Stop Oil, joined us…

Food and land

https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/food/

When the dig came to Holton land

It started with our last day of the year walk around Holton Pits, when Nat invited a Detectorist, Nick, to join us. He introduced me to Cheryl, who once contacted, inspired confidence and sorted. She arranged for a group dig of the land, mine and Alans (with his permission) on Wednesday for Sunday. Total would…

Jan – First Planting of a hedge

The historic first planting on the land. A hedge of hawthorn, maple, hazel, wild cherry, and hornbeam . Totally unexpected as it was a Warm Room day in the cabin - but all who turned up fancied planting a hedge. Chris rocked up - he thought he'd surprise me and he did. (He almost didn't…

Double Patard found on land

Nick Welsh, who came on our Pits walk at the invitation of Nat Bocking, found this double Patard. Here's how Nat describes it: It's a fragment of a double patard of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, Count of Flanders (1467 – 1477). It was minted in 1467 – 1474.  Silver double patards of the…

Wild Wenhaston – Heritage trees

I was an interloper, who had the cheak to invite another along with me, but a good other, Christina, a new resident of Wenhaston. And we are partnering to measure the heritage trees in our square mile. First we had to learn how to measure. On a cold December day, after tea/coffee in the lambing…

Staverton Thicks with Gary Battell

‘a famous and awesome place of Tolkienesque wonder and beauty’, and ‘one of the best-preserved uncompartmented medieval parks’. Oliver Rackham, The History of the Countryside, 1986 As I drove away from Staverton at the end of the day, I felt I had walked among the ancients, not as grand or huge or well known or…