Hawridge and Cholesbury Commons Preservation Society

NEWSLETTER OCTOBER 2021  

The Commons are now looking beautiful in their autumn colours. Again this year, we have been fortunate to have James Jolliffe carry out our routine maintenance. The second grass cutting in the autumn was much needed after a season of almost unprecedented vegetation growth. However, in addition James has carried out a number of further useful activities. One of the most effective was the widening of the Bottom Ride which should make it easier to dry out as well as providing a clearer view for riders and walkers and also making it easier for future work by a large tractor. Low hanging branches and bottle-necks were also removed on other rides. After clearing the pond of the invasive New Zealand Pygmy Weed the spoil was buried near the Bottom Ride since NZPY cannot survive to spread further when buried deep enough. James also created channels for water to run off down Stoney and Pound Lanes. This has proven highly effective especially when we had problems with burst water mains a month or two ago. 

We were delighted that Neil Jackson of Chilterns Conservation Board, who used to advise us and who returned to the Commons after about 20 years, told us that our Commons were the best managed small Commons that he has visited. We will strive to keep them that way. The most significant challenge that will affect the Commons over the coming years will be in dealing with Ash dieback which unfortunately is prevalent here as elsewhere.

AGM: This year’s AGM will be held at Cholesbury Village Hall on Thursday 2nd December at 7.30pm and, as always, we encourage you to come to find out more about what is going on here on the Commons and to discuss how we might deal with ongoing challenges. All are welcome. Please take sensible precautions in line with Covid Regulations. Wine and nibbles will be provided. The business part of the meeting will be kept as brief as possible. 

Each of the Committee Members is prepared to stand for re-election

Mark Hobbs – Chairman

Lindsay Griffin – Vice Chairman

Philip Prettejohn - Treasurer

David Dennis  - Minutes Secretary

Nick Brown

John Caple

Isobel Clark

Sarah Higgins

Janet Hopkinson

Rebecca Walton

Tim Watts

Other Volunteers: As always, we welcome others to help with the work of the Committee which is very varied from hands on; help with our various projects; generating ideas for fundraising; and so on. Whatever your skills it is likely that we can use them. Should you wish to be involved in some way please contact Mark Hobbs

Motion: At this year’s AGM we plan to move that we change the AGM date to the spring in future to take advantage of better weather and lighter evenings and in the hopes that more members will be encouraged to attend. The Notice of the AGM, which will include details of this change and one or two more minor changes to the Constitution (including a summary of those changes), can be found here.

This will mean that for one year only there will be no AGM in 2022 though we may hold an EGM instead if necessary. The accounts will continue to be finalised at the end of October each year and will be available on the website hawridgeandcholesburycommons.org for public scrutiny from December each year as they have always been.

Subscriptions: As we have sufficient funds to cover our current expenses the Committee is recommending that, for now, we keep the subscription levels as they have been for 12 years - £10 per adult and if both parents become members children are included! Where else have prices stayed at that level for so long?

However, we may need to revise this at some point if we are to continue to enjoy the same standard of contract work in the future and as we also hope to support Christine in dealing with the very difficult problems due to Ash dieback. This will be a recurring theme over the next few years!

Subscriptions for next year fell due at the beginning of November and we are very grateful to all those of you who choose to pay by PayPal or by Direct Debit. It is easy to pay by either of these methods on our website Hawridge and Cholesbury Commons under HCCPS Membership. Alternatively, you can pay by Bank Transfer: Account Number: 50458015 Sort Code: 20-02-06 Reference: Subs + Payer’s name. Cash or Cheques (made payable to HCCPS) may be sent to Philip Prettejohn, Barncroft, Vale Farm, Hawridge, Chesham HP5 2UG. 

After the business of the Meeting is completed at the AGM we intend to showcase some of the achievements of the Society over the years with a short film. 

Fundraising: As well as subscriptions and welcome donations, in large part our current healthy bank balance is due to the continuing successful sales of our calendar and cards. Once more we are very grateful to all who have contributed to make these happen. This year we have been sent a large number of really beautiful images from Local Photographersand our apologies to anyone who didn’t make the calendar. We had some difficult selection choices. However, we may still be able to use your images on cards or on the website so please keep sending them. After printing we have discovered an error in the calendar. Guy Williams’ beautiful Sunset over the Hale has been wrongly attributed to Isobel Clark. My sincere apologies to Guy for this error.

Susie Bell has again designed the calendar at no cost to us; Orbitpress have continued to print it very efficiently at very reasonable rates; and the following sponsors have kindly helped with the printing costs, many of them since our first calendar in 2013:-  WE Black; Chiltern Motors; Chiltern Velo; Cholesbury- cum- St Leonards Horticultural Society; Christmas Tree Farm; George Brown’s; Full Moon Pub; HG Matthews; James Jolliffe; MT Loos; Orbitpress; Philip Matthews; St John’s Vet’s practice.

Since the August Bank Holiday Fete we have also sold approximately 500 cards. Though we sell them at a very reasonable price they provide us with a steady income. Our thanks to everyone for your support!

Calendars (£10 each + £1 for a sturdy envelope) and cards will be on sale at the AGM and at Christmas stalls on Saturday 20th November 10am – noon at the Cricket Pavilion and at the local Art Exhibition and Fair at Cholesbury Village Hall on Saturday 4th December from 10am to 5pm. 

They are also available from Chiltern Motors, from Committee Members and from Lindsay Griffin 758 440 or lindsaygriffin@yahoo.co.uk. A limited number of fruit cakes £15 each (ready to ice as Christmas cakes) will also be available. Please contact Lindsay to order.

We have a wide variety of beautiful cards blank for your own message (£1.25 each or 5 for £5) suitable for many occasions. Examples below.

Meantime, our work with the school continues. Christine and Lindsay spent a lovely afternoon on Hawridge Common with members of the School Council and their teacher assistants planting more native daffodils and fritillary bulbs and looking at the nesting boxes and bug hotel which were previous ventures with the school children. Our Thomas trophy will be awarded to the current Year 6 students who submitted their drawings of animals on Hawridge Common to the Horticultural Society’s Show. Some of these can be seen in next year’s calendar. Our DofE candidate, Sophie Brown has recently cleared the boundary stone at the bottom of the Commons as well as planting bulbs and helping with the ongoing clearing of weeds around the heathers. Her work has been very much appreciated.

Our thanks too to all those who support us throughout the year to keep the work of the Society operating smoothly.

 We do hope to see as many of you at the AGM as possible and that you continue to enjoy the Commons.

 Lindsay Griffin

Newsletter AUGUST 2021  

Calendar: It is now time to submit any good photos for next year’s Hilltop Villages Calendar. Please send any suitable photos of local creatures, people, activities or scenes to Lindsay Griffin by mid September. Ideally, contenders for the main months need to be taken on a camera but photos taken on your mobile phone or iPad are welcome for smaller inserts and we need over 60 photos in all for the calendar. We also need photos taken at different times of the year so that we can match them to the appropriate month. Where possible contenders for the front cover should be in portrait format and landscape for the months. The sale of the calendar makes a significant contribution to enabling us to maintain the Commons. Your help is very much appreciated.

Local Wildlife Site: Part of the Commons and Christine’s farmland have been designated as Local Wildlife Sites for many years (previously Sites of Scientific Interest) and we have been visited recently by Fiona Everingham, Local Wildlife Sites Surveyor from Bucks and Milton Keynes Environmental Records Centre. Fiona is now keen to include all of the Commons as a LWS. Fiona hopes to highlight our Commons for visits from the Bucks Invertebrate Group next year and from the Fungus Group in the autumn.

Pallett’s Pond: Whilst Fiona was impressed with the management and state of the Commons in general, like us she was concerned about the state of Pallett’s Pond. However, Christine was able to assure her that the pond is in recovery from the infestation of New Zealand Pygmy Weed, fish which have been dumped there and from the previous leak under the road. With the removal of the weed infestation on a regular basis now and in the hope that we may be able to control it by biological means in the future we do hope to restore it to a much better condition. There is a mite which controls the weed which is currently being trialed successfully elsewhere.

Paths and Rides: Thanks again to James Jolliffe for his work cutting the paths and rides. After this year’s rather strange weather this has been much needed. I don’t think I have ever seen the grass grow as long as it has recently. Our thanks too to Janet and Nick Brown and his daughter, Sophie, who is currently doing her DofE with us for their work on the little paths.

Heather Regeneration: Happily, the work done by last year’s DofEs and several adult volunteers on clearing the bracken, birch and gorse saplings from our heather beds is paying off and there are signs of new heather shoots emerging. I am sure that the volunteers will all be happy that their efforts were not in vain and that we will see an even more impressive show of heather later in the year. Meantime where the earth had been disturbed we had a fantastic show of foxgloves.

Foxgloves: In his wildlife article in The Times, Jonathon Tulloch gave some fascinating information about foxgloves. Apparently they have female flowers at the base and male flowers at the top. Bumble bees, which are their main pollinators, routinely visit the female flowers first and work their way up visiting each flower. This is a very clever strategy since it means that the bee cross-pollinates the females on the plant with pollen from another plant that it has visited and then collects pollen

from the male flowers as it scales the plant before going on to yet another. Apparently a foxglove plant can have up to 80 flowers on each plant.

Moth Release: On Saturday 3rd July about thirty people met outside the Full Moon for David and Peter Bygate’s moth release. As always this was a fascinating event. The participants ranged from about 2 years old to 80 plus and all were equally engaged. There had been well over 300 moths trapped overnight and 56 different species including some of the large hawk moths. David and Peter had potted up several before we got there so that they could be passed around in a socially distant manner.

The children were totally agog at seeing the variety of creatures that they probably have never encountered before and enjoyed the fact that they were able to have them crawl over their hands if they chose to. David and Peter were also able to provide the adults with very interesting information about species such as the Peppered Moth which demonstrated evolution in practice. The same species has a largely white background in the south but evolved to have a mainly dark background further north where it was more polluted. The adaptation of its background colour meant that it could blend in with its background leaving it much less vulnerable to predators.

Congratulations to David and Peter who have now successfully identified the 300th macro moth on the Commons. It will be interesting to see what they next achieve!! Here are a couple of messages of appreciation from the participants:-

‘Thank you and Peter once again for another fascinating gathering to see the results of your moth trapping. So good to see the young all enjoying a new experience.’
Liz Firth

‘Thank you for such a lovely time on Saturday morning. Not only was our grandson fascinated, but we were too. Such beautiful creatures and how wonderful that there are 300 different species on the Common. It is so kind of you and Peter to give your time each year.” Nicki Tullett.

Glow Worms: John Tyler, an expert on glow worms, visited our Commons with David and Rebecca and a few others in late May. He concluded that several parts of the Commons appear suitable habitat for glow worms. Apparently, they like open areas of grassland and lowish scrubby wood edges. Moist areas are good since they encourage slugs and snails which are the only things that the glow worm larvae eat. The larvae take two or three years to fully grow by which time they will have consumed approximately 70 slugs or snails!! (We could all do with some in our gardens at present!).

Adults only survive for a short time and do not eat anything. The larvae have a pulsing glow whereas the adult female has a steady glow. She remains close to the emergence site and is flightless and will glow until mated (up to a few weeks). The adult male is able to fly some distance but spreading out to form new colonies is limited because the females remain in the same area where they emerged.

David and Rebecca have been out surveying our Commons recently for any sign of glow worms using 12 LED lures but so far have found no sign of any. John Tyler pointed out that given the weather conditions they were later this year than at other times. Reintroduction of larvae from one of John’s sites may be possible in the future.

Barn Owls: Lynne Lambert and a colleague from Borg (Bucks Owl and Raptor Group) came back to check the barn owl box on Christine’s farmland and found three chicks which were at the right stage to be ringed. This is impressive since the adults cannot fly in wet weather and so feeding the chicks in our recent erratic weather has no doubt been a challenge for the parents. We recently received a new trail camera from the Village Train Fund and we hope to use it to see if we can get footage of the Barn Owl activities. We also have plans to use it in Hawridge Vale to see if we can capture further photos of the polecat which Andrew Jordan found on his property.

Hedgehog: A few weeks ago Peter Hopkinson stopped the traffic when he spotted a hedgehog crossing the road from Stoney Lane towards Hawridge Place. This is the only sighting of a hedgehog that we know of down this end of the Commons since I think the early 60s. Apparently they don’t co-exist with badgers which are able to unroll and eat them. I hope that this one has survived! Do you know of any other hedgehogs around? Please let us know.

Lichens: Isobel Clark has updated us on her findings.

‘Over the last 5 months I have been wandering the Commons and wider area, looking out for lichens of all sorts. I’ve been amazed that they seem to be almost everywhere and that I didn’t really see them before now.... the tiny lichens slowly grow, fruit and disperse, collecting food and water from the air whilst attached, more or less, to trees, posts, stones and tiles.

Lichens consist of at least two organisms growing together, a fungus and either an alga or a cyanobacteria. There are three main groups:

‘Crusty’ lichens are found on all kinds of surfaces, from stone, brick, tile and metal to worked wood and live bark. They grow very slowly and are attached to the surface so strongly they cannot be removed without taking some of the substrate to which they are attached.

‘Bushy’ lichens are found mostly on bark, and grow from a single point of attachment known as a holdfast. These are sensitive to nitrogen and sulphur dioxide pollution so usually only grow in very clean air where there is no fertilising of crops, burning of coal or lots of traffic.

So it is encouraging that I have found a few examples of Usnea on the Commons as well as several examples of other bushy lichens.

‘Leafy’ lichens mostly grow on bark and wood but can sometimes be found on stone. They are attached at many points underneath but can usually be removed without taking any of the substrate. They vary in colour from grey through green to yellow and orange. One of the most common ones I’ve found, near to roads and arable fields, is Xanthoria parietina which is orange when it is in the sun and greyish when in the shade. There’s so much of it beside the road that you can see it from quite a distance. This one seems to thrive near sources of nitrogen pollution.

On our Commons, the lichens which are most sensitive to pollution seem to be particularly numerous on old hawthorn trees growing either in hedges or woodland edges where they have been well-lit for decades. Areas that are particularly well- endowed are the scrub areas beside the bottom ride and in one place beside Horseblock Lane. If we can conserve these habitats, away from roads and arable fields, we should be able to support communities of these ancient and symbiotic life-forms which give us an indication of pollution levels and contribute to the absorption of CO2, possibly helping to slow climate change.

We are very fortunate to have so much varied wildlife around us and experts who can show us where to look. Enjoy!

Lindsay Griffin

Hawridge and Cholesbury Commons Preservation Society

Newsletter February 2021  

AGM: A full report of the AGM can be found on our website hawridgeandcholesburycommons.org.

The following Committee members were elected unopposed.

Chairman: Mark Hobbs mark@kendrickhobbs.co.uk Tel. 758 505 mobile +44(0)7812 074219

Vice-Chairman: Lindsay Griffin lindsaygriffin@yahoo.co.uk 758 440

Minutes Secretary: David Dennis

Treasurer: Philip Prettejohn treasurer.hccps@gmail.com

Committee Members: Nick Brown; John Caple; Isobel Clark; Sarah Higgins; Janet Hopkinson; Rebecca Walton; Tim Watts

Honorary Examiner: Mike Fletcher

Mark Hobbs our new Chairman: Mark has lived in Cholesbury since 2007 and has been a Committee member of the HCCPS for eleven years. Based close to the cricket pitch, Mark and his wife Jo have two girls, both away at University and an old dog – Twiggy. Mark has had an interest in the Commons since moving to the Villages and has participated in many Commons Conservation sessions over the years.  He runs a small business from home so is often about and tries to get out onto the Commons and local footpaths and tracks as often as possible.

Annual Closure of the Horse rides: As usual the horse rides will be closed on the first Monday in March to maintain their status as permissive rides. They will therefore be closed from dusk on February 28th to dusk on March 1st.

Annual Litterblitz: Our annual litterblitz will be held from Saturday 27th March to Easter Monday 5th April and as usual garbage bags will be left at the three main collection points – by the Cricket Pitch; opposite the School and opposite Church Lane, Hawridge. We will make every effort to ensure that these have only been handled in accordance with Covid restrictions but Please wear gloves whilst you carry our any litter picking. Filled sacks may be left at the collection points but if possible please take any home for your normal roadside collection. If there are items which are too heavy to move please leave them by the roadside for Council pick up or tell us where they are so that we can move them to the roadside. 

Whilst it is really helpful for everyone to make a special effort to clear debris from the Commons during Litterblitz, before the vegetation gets too long, we do value your efforts to keep the Commons rubbish free at all times. You are never too young to start! Recently, Janet encountered Camillo(?) and his Dad out on the Common late one afternoon....... apparently it was his own idea for his Dad to bring him to the Common......Surely our youngest ever litter picker – the litter pick was almost as tall as him!! 

Well Done, Camillo and his Dad and many thanks to all for your continuing efforts. 

Free Litter picks: If you would like a litter pick free of charge please contact Lindsay Griffin 758440 or lindsaygriffin@yahoo.co.uk. Nine year old twins, Peggy and Dexter Muggeridge-Breene made good use of the litter picks that we provided on the Commons recently with their father Keith.

Projects: Now that we are less involved with the maintenance work on the Commons we hope that we can undertake some new projects of interest. Isobel and David Dennis have agreed to investigate the lichens which are found here. These organisms, a combination of an alga and a fungus, are good indicators of pollution. Some lichens will tolerate some pollution whilst others are less tolerant. Hopefully we will have some of the latter here. Isobel and David will be seeking advice from the British Lichen Society in attempting to identify as many resident species as possible.

Isobel wrote “Thanks to all of you for encouragement and offers of help. We are advised to do as much collection of information about the lichen as possible in situ. We have photos and samples to keep us busy for quite a while yet. But we'll let you know if we need any more. The nitrogen survey is done by looking at lichens on various trees so we won't need to collect anything from them. 

However if you come across a lichen you think looks interesting, please take a photo, grab the W3W location and send it on to us. We can't guarantee we'll have a look, and especially can't guarantee we'll be able to identify it, but it'd be good to know where to look for further lichens….. after we've done this pollution survey!”

Commons’ knowledge – a message from Ian Phillips

We are greatly indebted to Veronica Mash for continuing to improve and maintain our HCCPS website https://www.hawridgeandcholesburycommons.org.

If you haven’t visited the site lately there is a wealth of information for locals and visitors alike including our latest news, species surveys, our brochure, 5 ‘Jubilee Walks to download and our By Laws. Please take a few minutes to have a look and let us know if there is any content we could add which may improve everyone’s enjoyment of the Commons.

With more and more people looking to enjoy the outdoors over the last year we are pleased to see people of all ages on the Commons. It is important that all users of the Commons show courtesy and respect to other users and different permitted pursuits can co-exist – in most instances, thankfully, this is the case.

Bicycles and wheeled vehicles are not allowed anywhere on the Commons. 

There are a number of permissive horse rides and these are clearly marked on the maps displayed at either end of the Commons (by the Cricket Club and the top of ‘Church (Parson’s) path’ leading from Hawridge Church to Hawridge Vale) and on the website https://www.hawridgeandcholesburycommons.org/new-page-1

We try wherever possible to identify and welcome new residents to the Hilltop villages with a copy of our brochure and information about the Commons and the HCCPS. If you would like more information about the permissive rides/ footpaths (perhaps you are new to the area and your children are just starting to ride and you are not sure of the geography), please get in touch lindsaygriffin@yahoo.co.uk  Tel  01494 758440

Thank you to everyone who helps keep our Commons special. They have been a constant source of pleasure and solace for many at these unprecedented times.

Lindsay Griffin