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.
27th February 2021 - a Saturday and a harbinger of spring perhaps with the sunshine and the throng in Corsham Park. On entering the park from the South Avenue, being a nerd of the first order, I counted the number of people in view - fifty-four. But this, of course, wasn't the end of it as I couldn't see people by the lake or in the 'north field' beyond the fence/gate (shown in the title picture). Is the throng the result of the fine weather, Covid exercise or the overdevelopment of this small Cotswold town? There comes a time when a walk in the country loses its wonder (of being 'at one' with nature) if the High Street multitude shifts to the country, and that certainly was the case here.
And talking of "growth at all costs" (last picture), just this week, approval has finally been given for SouthPoint Business Park (planning application 20/02511/REM) which is just south of here between the A350 and the B4528 (Patterdown-Lacock). This is 43.5 acres of farmland lost at Showell Farm with an over-the-table £5.3 million going to the (former) landowner. Strange that no matter the plot size (10 acres at Rudloe (Bellway), 30 acres at Bradford Road (Redcliffe) or here, 43.5 acres), the over-the-table price is always in the region of £5 million. Anyway, just locally, with these and all the other greenfield (farmland) developments, we are talking hundreds of acres lost. And can you hear the future cry ... 'but we haven't got enough farmland to grow the food we need'.