Follow up on Springs, Silt, Swans and Stuff in Sherborne

Yesterday’s post about springs on the 125m contour line in Sherborne generated a lot of interest and feedback - thank you. Briefly:

• Serena tells of two springs at her property, the Dairy farm, further down the valley. Both these springs are “in use” and they both sit right on, or very close to the 125m line, the same as the others up the valley.
• Anna tells me that the different geological “layers” produce a fascinating variance in wild flowers. Above the line, on the limestone layer, there is a greater preponderance of field scabious, greater knapweed, bulbous buttercup, salad burnet, pyramidal orchid, and upright brome. Below the 125m one sees much more meadow vetchling, tufted vetch, creeping buttercup, rushes, plus grasses such as meadow foxtail & tufted hairgrass. There are some species which tolerate both conditions, such bird’s foot trefoil, common knapweed and lady’s bedstraw. Anna’ s wildflower team carefully match geological conditions when disseminating seed. If it helps, I can post some images of these - let me know if you’d find that helpful.
• Martyn, a proud former village resident with a very long family history here tells me that he’s drunk from most of the springs in question, and is still alive (something he puts down to the purity of the water….) Interestingly he says the well beside the road just up from Waterloo Bridge was a favoured spot for villagers to pull over and wash their cars with buckets of water from there. I guess in those days an Austin 7 didn’t block the road as a modern car would. The other favoured spot , when Lord Sherborne wasn’t looking, was to drive down the track to the weir in the middle of the village and park on the ford there. Times (and cars) change.

Now, a question regarding our swans - Hamlet and Blanche, who sadly lost all their cygnets. Has anyone seen them? They have not been seen on the Broadwater or Narrowwater in the past couple of weeks. Perhaps they are up by Haycroft? Please tell us if you have seen them. It would be a tragedy if we have lost them too.

I have some positive news at last on silt management on the roads. You may recall I wrote a post a few months ago about this, and as a group we have maintained the grips but ceased when the outflows into Ragged Copse no longer accepted the run off. I’m pleased to say that the NT coordinated a small group of people last weekend to set out to clear the channels in Ragged Copse, on the far side off the wall from the grips. Here’s some photos of the channels dug.

These should make a significant help in diverting the silt from the road into the woodland. The following implications are apparent:

• As a group we must now play our part and keep the grips on the roadside clear. It’s tricky for the NT to arrange volunteers because the grips are outside the 30MPH zone and the provides the NT will Health and Safety responsibilities, but we as a group of individuals can do this in a couple of minutes quite frequently, deploying our traffic management team.
• These new channels will need occasional maintenance and possibly widening to keep them operative. I’ll offer our usual volunteers to help the NT.

Thank you to volunteers Cecilia, Alex and Duncan, and NT folk Andrew and Ben. Good work all.

Connected to this issue, we owe a debt of thanks to Brian Agg, who by himself recently dug out the grip at the very bottom of the hill (next to the pot hole), a grubby task in wet mud. Given that Brian broke his kneecap not so long ago, and should be taking things easy, this was admirable. Pat him on the back if you see him too!

Finally a repeat of the details of the Thai restaurant night on Saturday, - see the poster below. Remember you can “eat in” at the club, “eat out” on the grass outside if it’s a pleasant evening, or simply ”take away”. Dare I say that I think it is important to support this initiative as a community event. The team organising it would like to do more with a variety of other providers but there has been little take up so far, and it will be hard to repeat if we cannot , as a village, demonstrate an appetite (sorry for the pun). Please book now.