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.
The forecast was that this day, Friday 6th November 2020, was going to be the last sunny day for a while so this provided an excuse for 'exercise'. I say 'exercise' as this was also the first day of the second Covid lockdown and we are exhorted only to leave home for essential reasons, like food shopping (this was my back-up reason - HM asked that I buy bread from the Co-op), walking the dog and exercise. This walk, via the Co-op, took me through Corsham Park to Chequers Hill which used to be part of a weekly walk taken when I was a volunteer at Wiltshire College in Chippenham. At that time, I would usually meet Bill Hadfield (there are a number of photos of Bill in the 'Characters' section of rudloescene), the chairmaker, returning from his workshop at Mynte Farm. Ironic that, given this idyllic lifestyle: working for himself, lauded for his works, walking to and from work each day across Corsham Park, that in 2013 he should die from a heart attack on this very walk, close to the Dry Arch.
The title photos show cut stone and silver birches in the yard at Lovell's Pickwick Quarry and unidentified rushes (along with a hawthorn) in the ditch that separates the 'private' and public fields of Corsham Park.
More unidentified rush and sedge in the attenuation (SUDS) pond at the south-eastern corner of the Redcliffe Park Place development
The landscape version of the title photograph - the yard at Lovell's Pickwick Quarry
Upper Pockeredge Lake (or perhaps I should say the 'uppermost' as there are three 'lakes' - the smallest being a boggy pond on Pockeredge Drive). All are maintained by Wiltshire Council and Friends of Pockeredge Lakes.
Lower Pockeredge Lake appears after following the track from the upper lake
Spindle berries (see also in the gallery below) in the Pockeredge woodland
An oak spreads its tentacles in the Pockeredge woodland
This is the third Pockeredge 'lake'; Pockeredge Drive is to the right
And here is Pockeredge Drive and its maples (mainly) with the railway railings and cutting beyond
Silver maple leaves and horse chestnut trunk in Pockeredge Drive
Old man's beard on the railway fence in Pound Mead
A reminder of the times at the Methuen Arms - the first day of the second Covid lockdown
A lone sheep in the park with Corsham Lake beyond
And the 'sheep may safely graze' beneath one of Corsham Park's oaks
Hawthorn berries are abundant this year, presumably a result of weather conditions earlier in the year
Another of Corsham Park's oaks and the view east
Oaks, one still with its green leaves (genetics presumably or perhaps a different species), in the 'private' section of the park
Passage between the public and private parts of the park is via this sheep dip (with hawthorn beyond)
Rushes in the ditch bordered by hawthorns with a horse chestnut (typical morphology) in the field beyond
Young horse chestnuts now as we approach the northern section of the park beyond the fence (seen in the background)
Oaks in the northern section of the park close to the A4
Spot the tree! From the profiles, we have limes, an alder, oaks and maybe a maple.
An oak on the southern side of the A4 in the park frames the recently (relatively) planted woodland to the north of the A4
Oak branches and leaves and the dry stone wall that delineates the park with the A4 beyond
Another oak at the northern border of the park with the new woodland, with many alders, on the other side of the A4 (all Methuen land by the way)
The late-afternoon sun defines the profile of one of the park's oaks
In the view east from the park, we see Chippenham in the Clay Vale with Pewsey Vale and Salisbury Plain beyond; Bowden Hill lies to the south
Another view of the Clay Vale and beyond with a park oak in the foreground
And another oak in the northern part of the park
A parapet of the Dry Arch, part dry stone 'wall' and part honeycomb limestone - see below:
From Corsham Park: A Brief History here: Corsham Park, we find the following;
The private stretch of this path passes into Mynte Wood (planted as the northern fringe of Brown's park) and, at the point where it is crossed by a public footpath, an ornamental arch of "petrified" stone was built to allow the family and their guests to walk uninterrupted beneath the public right of way. The footpath still passes over the dry arch in the middle of the wood. It links Brown's park with the land to the north, later landscaped by Repton.
Print 