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.
Sunday 22nd January 2023 brought another freezing cold day continuing the five-day 'cold snap' which has followed the wettest January since 2014 (and the country-wide floods). The title photos show the view towards Kingsdown from White Ennox Lane and an elderberry 'tree' (and Artemesia vulgaris) in Boxfields Road.
The small meadow at Leafy Lane Playing Fields which has been seeded with yellow rattle and wild flowers. The yellow rattle is a necessary precursor for the flowers as it is parasitic on and suppresses the robust grasses.
A wintry prospect at Leafy Lane Playing Fields. This view of the fields is from the small meadow which has become part of Leafy Lane Natural Burial Ground. I am with Wiltshire Council's chief ecologist in that this is not an appropriate site...
This view of the eastern edge of the playing fields shows the extended car park which may also be used by attendees at burials and interments
Landmark trees provide a focal point and a refuge in the middle of the playing fields
In a July 2015 letter from Nova Scotia, Bruce Armstrong included the following sentiments about a woodland of which Leafy Lane Wood is all that remains: "... and just
beyond, the five acre wood beckoned, which we were allowed to explore only with adults. A child got lost there one day, and it was after dusk when all of us found him. It was a fairy tale wood (now
ripped up for houses, I see*) At my age, just past nursery rhymes and the big bad wolf, the wood was a special place of fantasy. That night, even searching with a lot of other people, I was in thrall
of the place. Made for Walt Disney cartoons, that wood was. The whole place was magical to me.
*Bruce is talking here of the houses of Park Avenue which were built at the time of, or following, his departure in 1953.
Unfortunately, the magic is slowly beng lost through overmanagement, tidying up and the Disneyfication of Leafy Lane Wood.
The owners' plan for the woodland includes the felling of numerous trees. As the rudloescene reader will know every tree in the wood, and in the line that separates the small meadow from the playing field, is the subject of a tree preservation order (TPO). No tree may be felled without an application to the local authority giving reasons for proposed felling. There is no extant application, as far as I am aware, for any tree work in the wood. The owners should know that such work may not be undertaken during the main breeding season for nesting birds - this is March to August/September.
With regard to the caption on the photo above which includes, inter alia, "...this is not an appropriate site...", apart from anything else (like technical reasons put forward by Wiltshire Council's chief ecologist), the presence of the adjacent football pitches and the activity there is a significant factor. On a walk through the wood some months ago, we stopped at the far (western) end of the woodland (the end which has seen the lion's share of burials/interments since the first on 12th January 2022) to watch a couple of football matches. If we had been bereaved family members, I think we would have been discomfited by the foul language and also perhaps by the two or three balls that came across the fence whilst we were there.
Another view of the landmark trees in the middle of the playing fields; this one to the south-east
Scores of cars parked up in speculative developer Payne's field for the Slaughterford Nine
The site of Webb's Stores, one of England's first self-service shops, in Boxfields Road showing Arthur Larkin's handiwork at the far end. The site was recently sold at auction for £91,000 (having had a guide price of £5,000).
A wintry scene in Boxfields Road
A southerly view over a Clouds Farm field at Boxfields
In White Ennox Lane looking south; to the left here is the site of Box Highlands School which shifted to Rudloe in 1984 (see Archive, Boxfields)
The view towards Kingsdown from White Ennox Lane
The view towards Chapel Plaister from White Ennox Lane
Tunnel Inn lies at the northern end of this section of White Ennox Lane
Out for a Sunday stroll in Beech Road
A beech hedge in Beech Road
Lower Rudloe from the A4; our strollers were headed this way
Lower Rudloe Farm with Mr T's B&B and Senor Bray's dwelling beyond; looks like the Maidments may have been out muck-spreading or some such thing (top left)
Folly Farm (centre); Lower Rudloe Farm (bottom right); the Village on the Hill (Colerne, on the horizon)
A seemingly desolate shelter at the brow of Box Hill but looking around...
... we find the finish line of the Slaughterford Nine which must have seen hundreds taking part
Slogging up the hill from Lower Rudloe at the finish of the Slaughterford Nine
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