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.
24th January 2025 and 'Welcome to Wiltshire'. The tree avenue at the A4 entry to Wiltshire has, for many years, created a fine spectacle in all seasons. So what does Wiltshire Council do? Why, cut the trees and shrubs back so as to reduce said spectacle to a shadow of its former self. The reason/excuse is (of course) ash dieback but I have repeated a number of times on these pages the words of our foremost botanist and landscape historian (Oliver Rackham) in The Ash Tree (p 162) "DEFRA produced a lengthy report on Ash Disease making much of the meagre evidence. Their science-based advice amounts to 'do nothing'. For once I agree... Some talk of eliminating the disease by sanitation felling. This might have worked 15 years ago when it was rare but it is too late now". An 'operative' I spoke with said that a further reason for the felling and coppicing was the 'danger' of overhanging branches falling into the road. But one can never tell which branches or which trees might fall. Take Leafy Lane Wood which holds hundreds of trees a number of which have been identified (in commissioned reports) as having problems. Yet, unaccountably, two 'healthy' beech trees fell over winter 2017/18 (see 8th December 2017 and 4th January 2018 articles here: Leafy Lane Wood articles). If the authorities were to adopt the position that there is a possibility that any branch or tree might fall at any time then, they (the authorities) would, no doubt, if they had the wherewithal (finance, manpower), chop down all the trees for which they were responsible (ref. 'thousands of trees felled in Sheffield': https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-64863130). My view is that Wiltshire Council must be se seen to be 'doing something' in case doing nothing could result in litigation. But that 'doing something' comes at a significant cost to our environment. In fact, there are/were few ash trees in this avenue.
Wiltshire (or any) Council should not be making decisions through fear of litigation. This is the prevalent, unsettling disease not ash dieback. The first two galleries below show what a fine spectacle the trees made. Then, in the third gallery, we see some of the devastation wrought by Wiltshire Council.
And this is how our fine avenue ends up:
14th February 2024 - supplementary gallery now that Wiltshire Council has completed its destruction of the fine canopy/avenue at the north-west entrance to Wiltshire along the A4. Greenery has gone but litter remains.