Calling all newt-counters
Last year, Prime Minister Johnson, standing behind a banner that read BUILD BUILD BUILD, condemned all our efforts to protect the biodiversity of the Lambrok corridor as newt-counting. This was just the first move in what is beginning to look like a long-term campaign to benefit developers at the cost of our rapidly deteriorating environment. The latest move, hidden in the shadows of an obscure website, proposes restricting the reach of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.
Continue reading “Calling all newt-counters”NO CAMPING!
One of our early-risers has sent us a picture of a small red tent pitched just inside the main entrance, right next to the noticeboard on which the NO CAMPING sign is displayed. It may or may not contain the person/people who lit a fire in the picnic place last night.
with Wiltshire Wildlife Trust
Sign Up with the Wildlife Trusts to do at least one wild thing every day throughout the whole month of June.
Wiltshire Police’s Rural Crime Team have asked us to remind you to keep your dog under control when there is livestock nearby. Letting your dog chase or attack livestock is a criminal offence.
COULD FOOD FORESTS BE THE FUTURE FOR ORCHARDS?
You will know that the Park has an orchard that was planted a few years ago. Some of you might have helped to plant it. It was created as a Community Garden and to maintain expertise we keep in contact with the Orchard Project, a national organisation for such orchard managers. This article is from their latest newsletter, which I feel will interest many park users.
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Dog control
There have been several incidents of dogs worrying livestock in and around Southwick over the past month.
Continue readingEcosystem restoration
UN Launches The Decade on Ecosystem Restoration
January marked the beginning of the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. The science says that these next ten years are humanity’s last chance to prevent catastrophic climate change, to prevent the destruction of the complex ecosystems we all depend on.
Continue reading “Ecosystem restoration”Make your voice heard
Planning application 20/00379/OUT
by Graham Hill
Things are still rumbling on for all three of the H2 sites between Trowbridge and Southwick.
Continue reading “Make your voice heard”Endangered flight corridor
Of the 18 species of bats native to Britain, 13 have been identified in Southwick Country Park, in Southwick Court, and in the green fields between Trowbridge and Southwick. The thirteen includes the rare and endangered lesser horseshoe bat, a Priority Species in the UK Biodiversity Action Plan, and the internationally protected Bechstein’s bat, one of the rarest mammals in the UK.
Read on to see how proposed development will harm the bats’ habitatH2 development sites
Mail from Simon Tesler, on the full extent of the H2 sites.
Continue reading “H2 development sites”Lambrok at Risk
by David Feather
Unfortunately, what is clear about the proposed development at H2.6 and the other two proposed housing sites (here and here) in the South of Trowbridge Community Area is that the original studies done for the Wiltshire Housing Site Allocation Plan (WHSAP) proposals were woefully inadequate. Now Wiltshire Council is involved in a poorly evidenced defence of the selection of this site and others in the area, and the developers are taking full advantage of this fact.
Continue reading “Lambrok at Risk”SCP on the Beeb!
By Ian Bushell
News of Southwick Country Park achieving Local Nature Reserve Status reverberated in high places!
Continue reading “SCP on the Beeb!”Mail from Southwick Court
by Simon Tesler
As you will have seen, revised plans have been submitted by developers for the proposed 180-house estate on the land between Southwick Court and Trowbridge’s southern edge (known as H2.6).
Continue reading “Mail from Southwick Court”Southwick Court development
Planning application 20/00379/OUT
Planning application 20/00379/OUT for site H2.6 at Southwick Court has been resubmitted. There will be a further period of public consultation and comments are invited until Sunday 14th March 2021.
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Archaeological Sites in Southwick Country Park Nature Reserve
by Barbara Johnson
When researching the history of Southwick for our Neighbourhood Plan, I contacted the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre, where the Data Manager provided details of numerous archaeological sites throughout Southwick and also a map giving the position of each site.
Continue readingLocal Plan Review
Wiltshire Council has initiated an eight week period of public consultation to inform the preparation of the Wiltshire Local Plan Review; the consultation began on Wednesday 13 January and will end on Tuesday 9 March 2021.
Continue reading “Local Plan Review”
Southwick Country Park is officially a Local Nature Reserve.
A warning
A message from a reader:
Apparently there is this guy trying to steal people’s dogs; it is doing the rounds on Facebook groups in Trowbridge. He is asking the dog’s breed and then waiting for them to get back to the car park to steal them. The people he is approaching are older and on their own.
My aunt walks her dog in the park and I would hate to think someone approached her in the park and stole her dog. It would be awful! Could you warn people this is happening?
Thanks x
Motorbike update (2.00pm)
This is the damage in Village Green, caused by what is obviously a child’s motorbike. This is an area where the Friends of Southwick Country Park have focused on increasing biodiversity, encouraging vetches, vetchlings and tares as food plants for the caterpillars of increasingly rare butterflies. We have also planted Fritillaria meleagris corms in this area.
Do you know the parents of the child or children who are riding motorbikes around Village Green?
Update 5.00pm
More pictures, from a member of FoSCP, of the damage to Village Green and Cornfield, taken late this afternoon.
Please: no motorbikes
There have been reports of motorbikes being ridden in the park’s fields. The tyre tracks are mostly in Corn Field, Kestrel Field and Lambrok Meadow and seem to show that the bikes enter and leave by the bridge into Lambrok Close. The only motorised vehicles allowed in the park are those maintenance vehicles authorised by Wiltshire Council, and mobility vehicles.
Continue reading “Please: no motorbikes”On the ninth day
We can’t find nine ladies dancing. Come spring, we will have daffodils fluttering and dancing in the breeze, as per Wordsworth, but feel that the link is tenuous; we will also have ladies’ smocks flowering in the meadows but we used them up yesterday by calling them eight milkmaids.
Continue reading “On the ninth day”
On the fifth day of Christmas…..
…we are foregoing the five gold rings and sending you, instead, five of Clive Knight’s pictures of the park’s Christmas floodwaters.
Real or fake?
A lot of people buy artificial Christmas trees in the belief that it benefits the environment, but environmentalists and energy analysts disagree. We need only look at a single element of the hundreds of thousands of artificial trees that will be put up and decorated this Christmas: they are all made of plastic.
Continue reading “Real or fake?”Planning application 20/09659/FUL
Newland Homes have applied to build 50 houses on WHSAP site H2.5 at Upper Studley.
Continue reading “Planning application 20/09659/FUL”
Southwick Country Park Nature Reserve 