Welcome to the Rudloe and environs website.
Here you will find news, articles and photos of an area that straddles the Cotswold Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in north-west Wiltshire.
Contributions in the form of articles or photos are welcome. Even those with completely contrary views to mine!
Thanks to the website builder 1&1 and Rob Brown for the original idea.
Rudloescene now, in January 2014, has a sister, academic rather than anarchic, website about Box history here: http://www.boxpeopleandplaces.co.uk/
It contains thoroughly professional, well-researched articles about Box and its people.
Contact rudloescene through the 'Contact' page.
Pictures taken on walks over the days 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th April follow. The title picture was taken on 5th April on the Spring Quarry spoil heap (known as Paddy's Hill as it was created from the spoil of Spring Quarry removed by Irish navvies during WWII to enable the creation of underground factories), latterly used for the Royal Arthur (1950-1992) Petty Officer's Training School assault course (known as Cliff and Chasm).
Wadswick Country Store (or Wadswick Agro-industrial and Retail Complex) from the Bradford Road - 2nd April 2020
Kingsmoor Wood lies beyond the baled miscanthus at Wadswick - 2nd April 2020
A miscanthus screen has been left between the Country Store and the 'harvested' elephant grass field - 2nd April 2020
A Wadswick Country Store fruit and veg box ready for collection - 2nd April 2020
Skynet Drive and the miscanthus has been harvested in the last few days leaving the new Redcliffe estate exposed - 3rd April 2020
Corsham Almshouses from Station Road on 3rd April 2020
Increasingly rare area of (marvellous) rough grassland in the grounds of Pickwick Manor - 3rd April 2020
Clump of celandines in Park Lane - 3rd April 2020
Mature broadleaf tree cut down and poisoned in Park Lane. If left to nature, such trees would coppice and regrow thus ensuring everlasting (in human terms) life - see the limes at the northern end of Leafy Lane - but Wiltshire Council ...
... goes blundering around the countryside misidentifying and poisoning at a time when we should be increasingly conscious of the need to retain as much as possible of the natural environment - this stump also in Park Lane - 3rd April 2020
A large clump of wood anemones in the Park Lane verge - 4th April 2020
The By Brook Valley and Colerne from right-of-way BOX20 at Lower Rudloe - 4th April 2020
Ploughed field at Mills Platt Farm on Box Hill - 4th April 2020
The Lower Common on Box Hill below the Quarryman's Arms - 4th April 2020
Mature hawthorn coming into leaf, Box Hill Lower Common - 4th April 2020
Concrete bases of the post-war refugee camp (for Eastern Europeans) at Westwells exposed by the owners, Summix, in order to demonstrate that this is a brownfield site (however, it's been greenfield for 60-odd years) - 5th April 2020
Concrete exposure at the Donkey Field, Westwells - 5th April 2020
Emerging maple leaves at the Donkey Field, Westwells on 5th April 2020
Taken into the sun so this image is quite flat but shows tractor and baler at Wadswick on 5th April 2020 - the bales are of miscanthus which will be used as fuel in the Wadswick furnaces/boilers which supply heat for the estate
Cut miscanthus at Wadswick awaits the baler - 5th April 2020
The latest server centre at Ark Data with a new one under construction at right - 5th April 2020
Native Westwellian construction atop the Spring Quarry spoil heap - 5th April 2020
New Westwellian folk art construction atop the Spring Quarry spoil heap - 5th April 2020
Ark Data generators (?) - power is of the utmost importance to the data centres so back-up systems are to be found all over the site - 5th April 2020
The MoD firing range at Westwells - this was in regular use until a short time ago - 5th April 2020
Military accommodation block (one of a number) at ex-RAF Rudloe Manor No 2 Site in Westwells Road. I believe that these blocks have been lying empty for some time and Bellway's planning application 19/07339/REM will see their demolition
This was, until this monstrosity was sanctioned and built (see articles elsewhere), a fine viewpoint over the Clay Vale to the Marlborough Downs and Salisbury Plain - see many pictures on this website, one of which is reproduced below
View over the Clay Vale to the south-west escarpment of the Marlborough Downs and Salisbury Plain - January 2000. This view is now lost thanks to the Dickens Gate greenfield development and the monstrous, supposed Corsham Science Park.
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